A Quote by Tracy K. Smith

I have kept journals at different times in my life. And a lot of my early notebooks became places where I would just think on the page, trying to parse what I was feeling, to find out what I was thinking.
Sports became a way for me to find my personality and identity in life. I had a lot of problems as a young kid like we all do with my own confidence, trying to grow up, and become a man and whatnot. Sports helped me get there. It helped me get my role in Rocky IV. It has helped me ever since in my movies and dealing with a lot of hard times between pictures and my life. I would say it's the one thing that's kept me going over the years.
I was going on this desert adventure with some friends and we were like, "How amazing would it be to just drag all these mirrors out there?" A lot of times I do things as an impulse and find out my inspirations afterward. Even with songs and lyrics, it can take me years to find out what I was actually trying to do.
I remember looking at James Joyce's journals. It was just amazing - it looked like ants had written on the page. So much writing on one page, every corner of the page was filled. Some of the lines were underlined in yellow or blue or red. A lot of color, intense writing.
If you cannot find yourself on the page very early in life, you will go looking for yourself in all the wrong places.
When I was still in prep school - 14, 15 - I started keeping notebooks, journals. I started writing, almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary, I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things.
I just sit down and the page just comes out and I look at it and the elements that appear on that page have a lot to do with what's going on in my life.
I had run away from home three times. I had been kicked out of three different schools under different circumstances. I was kicked out of everything that I didn't quit. Kicked out of schools. Kicked out of summer camp, the Boy Scouts, the altar boys, the choir, and something else that I can't think of, that I'm proud of. Anyway, that was my pattern. I just began to invent myself early in life, and went out and did something about it.
I think as you get older, you find you can play more things because you're moving to a different category. You play a certain thing as a younger man, playing action roles like I did. Then I moved out, and I kept trying to do different things all the time.
If it's worth remembering, I'll remember it. If something keeps coming back, if I keep thinking of that phrase, if I see manifestations of it at different times and different places, then I feel it's worth making a song out of.
If there wasn't anything to find out, it would be dull. Even trying to find out and not finding out is just as interesting as trying to find out and finding out; and I don't know but more so.
I've kept journals at many times in my life starting from when I was about 13 or 14. But it's boring and contrived to keep a journal every day. Better to write as the mood strikes.
The universe is large and old, and the ingredients for life as we know it are everywhere, so there's no reason to think that Earth would be unique in that regard. Whether of not the life became intelligent is a different question, and we'll see if we find that.
When I was 14, I started playing for Taye Academy in the city of Owerri, and then my whole life became football. I dreamed of playing for certain clubs, or going places I'd never been before, but I just kept my ambitions to myself because I never really expected that I could get to these places.
There are ways that women absorb situations, and I think women are different kinds of listeners. They're different in terms of how they parse out problem solving.
In terms of whether my mom was influential, I think she instilled a certain way of thinking in me quite early: having a reflective mindset regarding my actions and trying to find the underlying reasons to behavior. I think that's quite helpful when you're trying to understand a character.
The thing that's different about 'Girls' and 'Sex and the City' isn't just that we live in Brooklyn; it's that these girls aren't trying to find their major career paths or life partners. They're just literally trying to get through the week and pay the rent. It's a really different time of life.
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