“How can I put it? It’s like winning the Pulitzer. If you take it too seriously, you’re an idiot. But if you look at the names of the other poets who have won it, most of them are damn good. Not all of them—I’m not going to name names—but most. My editor was thrilled, and my wife jumped for joy. She hasn’t done that in a while.”
Philip Levine
more infosource: “Voice of the Workingman to Be Poet Laureate,” by Charles McGrath, The New York Times, August 9, 2011.
category: modesty, poet, prize, Pulitzer
medium: Newspaper article
“The profound modesty she had—that made her possess, not no belongings at all (no asceticism), but very few belongings—as if she wanted, at her death, that there would be no ‘getting rid of’ what had belonged to her.”
Roland Barthes
more infosource: entry dated October 3, 1978, in Mourning Diary, translated by Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 2010), 201.
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category: death, modesty, mother, possession, stuff
medium: diary
notes: On index cards, Roland Barthes starting keeping a mourning diary the day after his mother died in October 1977.
“I don’t consider myself a hero. I’m an ordinary girl who believed in her dream. You don’t have to be someone special or anything special to achieve something amazing. You’ve just got to have a dream, believe in it, and work hard.”
Jessica Watson
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modesty