Matthew Zapruder Quotes

#1. Somewhere back a whiskey or so ago I wrote that thinking was a real thing in the world, just like anything else. I mean that very literally, materially. And it's true about poems, too.

Matthew Zapruder

#2. It's a kind of de-familiarization in relation to the song: if she were to sing absolutely straight, right on the beat, because of the richness and intensity of her instrument - her voice - I think it could actually feel a little inhuman, too good somehow, separate from our concerns.

Matthew Zapruder

#3. Of course I was drawn to the sun bears, they're fascinating. But so are tigers and lots of other animals at the zoo. Probably a big part of the reason I felt so connected to them was because of their name: SUN BEAR.

Matthew Zapruder

#4. I guess my poems feel to me a bit like they are doing something in relation to experience, i.e. time.

Matthew Zapruder

#5. I don't know if anyone has ever mentioned this, we need to be careful with drugs! They're not just all fun and games! And of course poetry would be immeasurably worse without humor.

Matthew Zapruder

#6. I see sad crushed plastic
everywhere and put
some thoughts composed
of words that do not
belong together
together and feel
a little digital hope.

Matthew Zapruder

#7. Well, I believe that "thinking" is just as real a phenomenon in the world as anything else, and just as worthy of exploration. Maybe even more? So writing about "thought" to me is like writing about a tree or anything else real.

Matthew Zapruder

#8. I am intrigued and even moved by the idea of being right with the reader in the actuality that she or he is reading a poem. So the titles are an acknowledgment of the reality and value of that act in the world.

Matthew Zapruder

#9. Always in search of the question that might make you ask me one in return

Matthew Zapruder

#10. So for whatever reason those short lines just felt right to me, in my physical self. They were right for the movement of the poems. Some poems in the book have longer lines.

Matthew Zapruder

#11. Mahmoud Darwish wrote that "extreme clarity is a mystery." That sounds right to me. I don't want anyone hunting for anything ancillary to the true mystery. If that means risking being thought of as glib or dull or banal or stupid or whatever, I guess that will just have to be the way it is.

Matthew Zapruder

#12. I feel because I am never in my comfort zone I have an advantage.

Matthew Zapruder

#13. Miroslav Holub seems to expect his readers to act like scientists, who are curious in every direction, take nothing for granted, and are willing to accept any truth, however unexpected.

Matthew Zapruder

#14. Mimesis has longevity on its side. But Oasis wrote two of the greatest pop songs of all time, each with lyrics that mean less and less the more you think about them. So I'm going to have to go with the Gallagher brothers.

Matthew Zapruder

#15. Music and songs have always been a constant part of my life, and still are. My brother Michael, who is a songwriter and composer, is the one who most fully inherited the musical legacy of our family, but I got some part of it - mostly the feel.

Matthew Zapruder