A Quote by Simon Schama

I wrote a staggeringly bad poem when I was 19 after a girlfriend dumped me. I seem to remember comparing her to a tarantula. It was all very E. J. Thribb of me. — © Simon Schama
I wrote a staggeringly bad poem when I was 19 after a girlfriend dumped me. I seem to remember comparing her to a tarantula. It was all very E. J. Thribb of me.
My first girlfriend broke up with me on a yellow legal pad. After she picked me up from the airport one day, she took out a letter that her therapist wrote, and she read it to me. She and her therapists wrote a letter breaking up with me together.
When I was 13, I remember crying on my mum's shoulder when my first girlfriend dumped me via MSN Messenger. That was cold.
Right after I graduated, my girlfriend, who I had been going out with for five years, dumped me, and my grandmother died.
That's one of those questions that would just love to have a pat answer. You know, poetry's job is to make us feel good. Poetry exists to allow us to express our innermost feelings. There isn't one role for poetry in society. There are many roles for poetry. I wrote a poem to seduce my wife. I wrote a poem when I asked her to marry me. Poetry got me laid. Poetry got me married.
In seventh grade I had a magical teacher, her name was Mrs. Fried. She wore only pink, she drove a pink Mustang, and she was half out of her head. But very inspiring. And one day she said, "Take out a paper and pen and write something about peace." For some reason I wrote a poem on Noah - I don't know why I chose Noah - and it turned out it was for a contest for the UN. I ended up winning and reading the poem in front of the UN. I remember Mrs. Fried telling me, "When you write your first book, dedicate it to me." That was like, "Whoa."
Dating is so insecure. My last relationship, I was always there for her and she dumped me. I told her about it. I said, "Remember when your grandma died? I was there. Remember when you flunked out of school? I was there. Remember when you lost your job? I was there!" She said, "I know
It's definitely hard to live up to expectation. Especially early in my career, everyone was expecting so much from me, everyone was comparing me to my father. They didn't understand that they're comparing me to a world champion, which is very unfair as a novice.
After one of my plays came out, I had mixed reviews, some bad and some good. One day, it dawned on me. I thought, 'I wrote a play and he wrote a review, and that's the difference between him and me.'
You told me I wrote that poem because I was afraid of dealing with myself. And I used my mom as an excuse, accusing her of not appreciating or accepting me, when I should have been saying those words into a mirror.
The first thing I tried to do in the months after losing my mother was to write a poem. I found myself turning to poetry in the way so many people do - to make sense of losses. And I wrote pretty bad poems about it. But it did feel that the poem was the only place that could hold this grief.
One fan wrote asking for a very specific autographed photo. He wanted me to pose in tight jeans and boots and even enclosed a sketch of how I should dress! A lot of them just say they wish they had a girlfriend like me. They're very endearing letters.
I fell in love when I was 21, after returning from Australia. It lasted for about two years before she dumped me. It was, in retrospect, a really wonderful thing because it made me very poetic and melancholic.
Remember one thing about ESPN: People can be critical of them sometimes for being a large corporation but nine years ago I had a stroke and I couldn't talk. That's the way I made my living. ESPN could've dumped me very easy, but they didn't. They helped me and presented me an opportunity to get back on the air.
I can remember when I was 24, and I broke up with my first serious girlfriend for the first time. She was a very nice person, but she had a little bit of a tendency toward melodrama... Her response was to take the key to my apartment off of her key chain and hand it back to me.
In the Catholic Church, there are many other things which most justly keep me in her bosom. The consent of peoples and nations keeps me in the Church; so does her authority, inaugurated by miracles, nourished by hope, enlarged by love, established by age. The succession of priests keeps me, beginning from the very seat of the Apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after His resurrection, gave it in charge to feed His sheep (Jn 21:15-19), down to the present episcopate.
I have four daughters, the eldest is 19, the youngest is 12, and I watched all of them journey into motherhood. Motherhood is very deep. It starts when you're very, very young. Now, my 12 year old comes in, wants to put me to bed. And she'll, you know, put her hand on my forehead and say the prayer with me. As for years I've done for her! It's almost like a very beautiful, natural transition.
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