Matthew McConaughey‘s new book, “Poems & Prayers,” was born from the growing disillusionment he felt watching the news over the past few years.
The Oscar-winning actor took his book tour to “Fox & Friends” Friday morning, where he explained how his new collection of original poetry came to be.
“I found myself a couple years ago getting a little cynical,” McConaughey confessed. “I was looking around at the world, reading the news and going, ‘Man, there are not a lot of reasons to believe, when you look at the evidence, and I’m not ready to quit believing in God and myself and you and each other.’”
In response to that feeling, McConaughey started writing poetry in earnest again, returning to a practice that he had started decades prior. “I found I had written a lot of poetry over the last 30 years. I gathered it all. A lot of them are poems, a lot of them are prayers, as much for me as everyone else,” McConaughey explained.
“I think belief is in short supply. I think everyone is looking for it,” the actor added. “I think it’s necessary. If the doubt wins, we all lose. That’s what I’m selling here: belief.”
You can watch McConaughey’s full “Fox & Friends” appearance yourself in the video below:
McConaughey began writing poetry when he was 18 and was living outside of the U.S. as an exchange student in Australia. “I was pretty lost and looking, going out of my mind and trying to keep my sanity,” he recalled. “I started off writing poems, asking the big questions, trying to find out the meaning of life, what the hell was going on [and] trying to navigate [it all]. And I continued writing.”
The actor noted that he wrote poems during moments when he was both “lost and looking” and when he was living well and “catching green lights.” While the practice has helped him remain strong in his Christian faith, McConaughey said that he does not want people to think of “belief” as just a religious form of faith.
“As I’ve said, it’s not just belief in God. It is personally for me, but for a lot of people [it’s] belief in ourselves, belief in our children, in the future, in each other,” McConaughey remarked. “I think we need more of it.”
