Quotes by Barbara Hamby - Page 1

I want a God big enough to love those who don't believe in him.
Barbara Hamby / Poet
Believe
Enough
Copy Quote
If someone didn't believe in me that would kind of be a compliment in a way.
Barbara Hamby / Poet
Believe
Compliment
Kind
Copy Quote
I've been writing fiction as long as I've been writing poetry. It's just that the poetry took off, and it took me a lot longer to figure out how to write a story.
Barbara Hamby / Poet
Long
Writing
Writing Poetry
Copy Quote
Travel is something that I like to do because it gives you lots of images, and it also really makes you think about your own place in the world in a very different way.
Barbara Hamby / Poet
Giving
Make You Think
Thinking
Copy Quote
I think it's really hard to be joyful. I work hard at it. I always feel like it's a choice. You can be joyful or you can be depressed, and there just doesn't seem to be any future in depression.
Barbara Hamby / Poet
Choices
Hard Work
Thinking
Copy Quote
You want to make a representative selection, but at the same time, you want to give a sense of the whole project. I have this big conflict in my writing life that I'm trying to work out all the time.
Barbara Hamby / Poet
Giving
Work Out
Writing
Copy Quote
For 2,500 years, people have been writing odes. Why? I think that there's something innately human in wanting to praise the world even though it's disappointing in so many ways. There's always that tension.
Barbara Hamby / Poet
People
Thinking
Writing
Copy Quote
I was born in New Orleans, but I grew up in Hawaii. That was a paradise. That's a paradise I keep inside of me all the time. It's funny, I don't really write too much in poetry about Hawaii, but I published a book of stories a couple of years ago.
Barbara Hamby / Poet
Book
Couple
Writing
Copy Quote
I guess it was easier for me to find my voice in poetry than it was in fiction. I'm working on fiction again, and I find it a lot more difficult. It's a struggle. At a certain point, you have your voice and you go to it every time, so it's not like reinventing the wheel. That's the way I see it at least.
Barbara Hamby / Poet
Difficult
Struggle
Copy Quote
When I was a young woman, I had this friend who was really beautiful, and she would talk about how she was losing her looks, that she wasn't as pretty as she once was. She was gorgeous, and I thought, I'm going to stop this bad habit of self-criticism that I think a lot of women get into. You make a choice to be different.
Barbara Hamby / Poet
Beautiful
Choices
Thinking
Copy Quote
I was raised in a strict fundamentalist household, and I always say that gives you a muscle of belief. I want to believe in something, but I don't believe in what my parents believed in. Poetry has taken the place, or I think the arts have taken the place, of religion in my life. I wanted to see how that was working out through the poems.
Barbara Hamby / Poet
Art
Believe
Taken
Copy Quote
One of my problems with religion is that it's limiting in so many ways. I remember the first time I took a humanities class, I thought, I can't believe this. This is fantastic. This is what I want my life to be. When I was a young person, I did a lot of dabbling in Eastern religions, and it was very satisfying in some ways, but there's that limitation always, which I find myself bridling against.
Barbara Hamby / Poet
Believe
Humanity
Remember
Copy Quote
One of things I write about a lot is the role of women. An older friend of mine said that she feels like there's always a tension between wanting to be free and wanting to be cherished. I think that's one of the things that my whole book speaks to, wanting to break out of the confines of the roles that are prescribed for women and yet at the same time, not wanting to be totally free. You want to have intimate relationships. It's that bursting out of confinement.
Barbara Hamby / Poet
Book
Thinking
Writing
Copy Quote
I don't know anything about chemistry, but I know that there's a whole world of chemistry, of professional chemists. They have their prizes, they have their publications, they have their work. Just because I don't know about it, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. A lot of people say, "Isn't poetry in trouble today?" Or: "Nobody really reads poetry anymore." And I say, "You're crazy." There's a huge world of poetry out there. You may not know about it, but it's there.
Barbara Hamby / Poet
Crazy
Mean
People
Copy Quote
Everybody spoke English in my class, and they would turn to me and say, "What's going on in your country?" I would try to explain to Austrians, Poles, Australians, Israelis, Costa Ricans - people from all over the world - what was going on in our country. I would have to say, "I don't know what's going on, either. It's pretty evenly divided in our country. Sometimes one part's on top, and other times, the other faction is on top, and right now it's just crazy. We hate it as much as you do."
Barbara Hamby / Poet
Country
Crazy
Hate
Copy Quote
Cynie Cory roams the outer reaches of the heart’s territory, from the snowy winter of family life to the tropical jungles of love. She wears her heart on her sleeve and it is as big as the country she writes about. Is she the quintessential American girl? You bet she is, part Annie Oakley, part Emily Dickinson—sharpshooting poet of wild nights. She zooms in on the detritus of love—the broken fragments, the fallen leaves—and puts together a collage that is as heartbreaking as it is beautiful. Watch out—she’s driving down your street.
Barbara Hamby / Poet
Girl
Beautiful
Country
Copy Quote
I know that one of the things that I really did to push myself was to write more formal poems, so I could feel like I was more of a master of language than I had been before. That was challenging and gratifying in so many ways. Then with these new poems, I've gone back to free verse, because it would be easy to paint myself into a corner with form. I saw myself becoming more opaque with the formal poems than I wanted to be. It took me a long time to work back into free verse again. That was a challenge in itself. You're always having to push yourself.
Barbara Hamby / Poet
Challenges
Long
Writing
Copy Quote

Related Poet Authors

William Blake
Poet
Monday, Nov 28, 1757
Sunday, Aug 12, 1827
Zoketsu Norman Fischer
Poet
Zoe Whittall
Poet
Monday, Feb 16, 1976
Zbigniew Herbert
Poet
Wednesday, Oct 29, 1924
Tuesday, Jul 28, 1998
Yvor Winters
Poet
Wednesday, Oct 17, 1900
Thursday, Jan 25, 1968
Yvonne Zipter
Poet
Yusef Komunyakaa
Poet
Tuesday, Apr 29, 1947
Yunus Emre
Poet
Yosa Buson
Poet

Thursday, Dec 25, 1783
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Poet
Monday, Jul 18, 1932
Saturday, Apr 01, 2017
Yevgeny Baratynsky
Poet
Sunday, Mar 02, 1800
Thursday, Jul 11, 1844
Yehuda Amichai
Poet
Saturday, May 03, 1924
Friday, Sep 22, 2000
Yang Wanli
Poet
Xu Zhimo
Poet
Friday, Jan 15, 1897
Thursday, Nov 19, 1931
X. J. Kennedy
Poet
Wednesday, Aug 21, 1929

View All Poet Quotes

Top Authors

Walt Whitman
Poet
Monday, May 31, 1819
Saturday, Mar 26, 1892
Joe Biden
Vice President Of The United States
Friday, Nov 20, 1942
Billy Graham
Evangelist
Thursday, Nov 07, 1918
Martin Luther
Monk
Saturday, Nov 10, 1483
Monday, Feb 18, 1546
Lucy Larcom
Poet
Friday, Mar 05, 1824
Monday, Apr 17, 1893
Paulo Coelho
Lyricist
Sunday, Aug 24, 1947
Ernest Hemingway
Author
Friday, Jul 21, 1899
Sunday, Jul 02, 1961
Stephen Hawking
Physicist
Thursday, Jan 08, 1942
W. Edwards Deming
Statistician
Sunday, Oct 14, 1900
Monday, Dec 20, 1993
Robert Frost
Poet
Thursday, Mar 26, 1874
Tuesday, Jan 29, 1963
Vince Lombardi
Football Player
Wednesday, Jun 11, 1913
Thursday, Sep 03, 1970
George Orwell
Novelist
Thursday, Jun 25, 1903
Saturday, Jan 21, 1950
John Muir
Author
Saturday, Apr 21, 1838
Thursday, Dec 24, 1914
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Poet
Wednesday, Oct 21, 1772
Friday, Jul 25, 1834
Steven Wright
Comedian
Tuesday, Dec 06, 1955

View All Authors

Barbara Hamby Quotes - Page 1

Picture Quotes Maker

Related Poet Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page

Stay Connected

Picture Quotes Maker

Related Poet Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page