As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.
One of the hardest things I've had to deal with in my career is keeping my material topical even though I only release albums every three or four years.
Your career, interests and relationships are important, but they are only important insofar as they lead you toward a deeper understanding of yourself. Otherwise, they are irrelevant.
I'm not particularly a career-oriented guy. I'm lucky. I can make really interesting films much of the time with interesting people yet be anonymous, have a private life. But, I'd like to have the choice of the better roles.
I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death. They thought nobody can make a living from being a writer in Brazil. They were not wrong.
A third felicity of age is that it has found expression. The youth suffers not only from ungratified desires, but from powers untried, and from a picture in his mind of a career which has as yet no outward reality. He is tormented with the want of correspondence between things and thoughts.
Had I been a great athlete, I'm not sure I would have even gone into coaching. I may have turned out feeling that my life ended when my athletic career ended, as happens so many times with various athletes.
I first heard Laura Branigan sing live in my brother Nesuhi's apartment, where we had gone because he had a very good piano. I immediately realized that she had a great pop voice, in the classical sense. Laura had an instinctive feel for music and melody, and her delivery was sensational. Everybody at Atlantic knew that we had a winner in this young lady, and she came through with great hits that will be remembered for many years to come. I consider Laura to be one of my best signings, and I am proud to have had such a great singer in my career in the record business. We miss her dearly.
The outgoing and spontaneous person that the world knew while I was boxing was a persona that I created to sell tickets and promote my career. In my private life, I am quiet and reflective by nature.
The greatest embarrassment of my political career has been that active duties seem to deprive me of time for careful investigation. I seem almost obliged to form conclusions from impressions instead of from study.... I wish that I had more knowledge, more thorough acquaintance, with the matters involved.
My all-time favorite match that I've ever had was against Kyle O'Reilly in 2012, the 'hybrid fighting rules match' where we were bleeding buckets all over the place. And it was really a match that took my career to the next level.
Forget the career, do the work. If you feel what you are doing is on line and you're going someplace and you have a vision and you stay with it, eventually things will happen.
During my boxing career, you did not see the real Muhammad Ali. You just saw a little boxing and a little showmanship. It was after I retired from boxing that my true work began.