A Quote by Lisel Mueller

Poetry, for me, is the answer to, 'How does one stay sane when private lives are being ransacked by public events?' It's something that hangs over your head all the time.
Now we live in a time where the public and the private are completely fused and there isn't such a great distinction. We know our private lives are constantly made public. With Facebook and Twitter there isn't such a desire, it feels, to keep things private.
I have kept diaries, of course, but they can't be read for quite a long time. I'm always curious about people who are fascinated by writers' lives. It seems to me that we're always in our books, quite nakedly. I wonder, too, does the private life really matter? Who cares what is known about you and what isn't? Even when you make public something that's been private, most people don't get it - not unless they're the same generation and have gone through more or less the same experiences. So, in a sense, we're all private, by definition.
I am a public person and I have my private life. It's important for me that my private life stay private, that what I share with the people is my public personality.
We're interested by public personas and private personas, otherwise we wouldn't put on with actors rambling on with the same kind of stuff, over and over again, saying variations of the same thing. I'm always amazed by how fascinated people still are by actors because it's the same version of events that actors describe, all the time.
Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.
In the end, it is because the media are driven by the power and wealth of private individuals that they turn private lives into public spectacles. If every private life is now potentially public property, it is because private property has undermined public responsibility.
It seemed to me,' said Wonko the Sane, 'that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.
I don't understand why young entrepreneurs feel this pressure to take venture capital or go public. Don't get me wrong: Public companies are A-OK with me. I just think there is another way. Staying private is a lot more sane.
I write poetry to figure things out. Any time I’m trying to wrap my head around something, poetry is like a puzzle-solving strategy for me.
After asking questions about current recovery techniques, the conversation prompted me to ask myself, 'Why does it feel good after running to pour a bottle of water over your head?' I don't know the physiological answer, but the fact that it does feel better makes me perform better.
When you think intensely and beautifully, something happens. That something is called poetry. If you think that way and speak at the same time, poetry gets in your mouth. If people hear you, it gets in their ears. If you think that way and write at the same time, then poetry gets written. But poetry exists in any case. The question is only: are you going to take part, and if so, how?
The sensuality of desperate lives. Only poets talk like that. But poetry has never had an answer for anything. All it does it bear witness. To despair. And desperate lives.
Either over neither, both over either/or, live-and-let-live over stand-or die, high spirits over low, energy over apathy, wit over dullness, jokes over homilies, good humor over jokes, good nature over bad, feeling over sentiment, truth over poetry, consciousness over explanations, tragedy over pathos, comedy over tragedy, entertainment over art, private over public, generosity over meanness, charity over murder, love over charity, irreplaceable over interchangeable, divergence over concurrence, principle over interest, people over principle.
Private choices are not private; they all have public consequences...Our society is the sum total of what millions of individuals do in their private lives. That sum total of private behavior has worldwide public consequences of enormous magnitude. There are no completely private choices.
For decades, the journalistic norm had been that the private lives of public officials remained private unless that life impinged on public performance.
I found myself getting more publicly shy when the gala events and big crowds started. Some people embrace it. To me, it's not worth enough to risk my private life being public.
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