“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.” ThinkingGivingBelieveArtBeliefParentTakenWork OutFundamentalist Author:Barbara Hamby
“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.” ThinkingChoicesHard WorkJoyful Author:Barbara Hamby
“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.” ThinkingDifferentBeautifulChoicesHabitLosingYoung WomenGorgeousBad HabitsReally Beautiful Author:Barbara Hamby
“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.” ThinkingWorldGivingDifferentMake You Think Author:Barbara Hamby
“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.” ThinkingWritingBookSpeakBreakIntimateTension Author:Barbara Hamby
“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.” PeopleThinkingWorldWritingPraiseTensionDisappointing Author:Barbara Hamby
