A Quote by Phyllis Gotlieb

You don't go after poetry, you take what comes. Maybe the gods do it through me but I certainly do a hell of a lot of the work. — © Phyllis Gotlieb
You don't go after poetry, you take what comes. Maybe the gods do it through me but I certainly do a hell of a lot of the work.
Maybe there is no actual place called hell. Maybe hell is just having to listen to our grandparents breathe through their noses when they're eating sandwiches.
When I'm through with the Lee Greenwood Theatre, I won't do anything else in entertainment. Maybe I'll become an ambassador for the United States maybe I'll get into television, some news anchoring or something in a major city. Certainly the visibility would interest me a little bit. But someplace that would allow me to sit still certainly.
Damn me to hell or take me to heaven, but for Gods sake, do it now.
About 95% of the people listening to me agree with me. But I can continue to work with half or 30 or 20% of the audience hating me. In fact, one of the things I've had to do psychologically, in order to thrive, I've had to learn how to take being reviled and hated as a sign of success. Most people are not raised - I certainly wasn't - to want to be hated. I can only think maybe one or two people who were. Hitler. Maybe somebody else. Maybe Saddam.
Certainly Dracula did bring a hell of a lot of joy to a hell of a lot of women. And if this erotic quality hadn't come out we'd have been very disappointed.
There are a lot of things that people go through, and maybe they don't know how to get through it, and maybe you do, and if you have some sort of knowledge or power, share with the world.
I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry ?rst, ?nds he can't, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.
If you go into a bar in most places in America and even say the word poetry, you'll probably get beaten up. But poetry is a really strong, beautiful form to me, and a lot of innovation in language comes from poetry.
I don't know where the hell I'll be in 5 years. Maybe I'll be producing movies maybe I'll be on a corner selling apples. I don't know, but I'm having a hell of a lot of fun.
I love to write songs, but they don't come easy to me - I spend a lot of time writing really dumb stuff that I have to look at the next day and think, 'God, what was I thinking?' That's my process, is just to go through a lot of dumb stuff and hope that, after a lot of hard work, I'll find a good idea.
I can take a week's vacation - maybe a week and a half - but after that, I'm itching to go back to work.
I've learned during my life that if I am in hell, I make my own glory. I've also been in glory, and perhaps I've made my own hell, but I certainly don't take anyone down with me.
I got to a point I was so focused on getting a title shot all the thought in my head was to go out there and win at all costs, so maybe it made me fight a certain way, maybe take a lot of risks and stuff like that.
we are far too used to the assumption that poetry and poets will be there when we want them, no matter how long they have been ignored, taken for granted, misused. After all, isn't poetry a form of prophecy, and aren't prophets known for their talent for flourishing in inhospitable deserts and other bleak surroundings? Maybe. But maybe not indefinitely.
I've never thought of my poems as violent. Violence, to me, has so much negativity attached to it - maybe that's my trouble with the word. But ferocious - indeed, I'll take it. And yes, poetry does need a bit of ferocity. Poetry needs to be alive, unabashedly, and, for me, that entails seeing its complexity - the grit and grimness and jubilance and beauty.
When I am working a book, I go through my library and take a look through some of the great cartoonists of the past, like Cliff Sterrett, who did "Polly and Her Pals," or Winsor McCay who did "A Little Nemo in Slumberland," and Herriman - and I just looked through these guys and looked for somebody to steal. You know, looked for who I could swipe, or turn into - who's work I will turn into my work. And I still use, after all these years, these artists as inspirations. So, here in my eighties, I go back to when I was eight for my inspiration.
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