Greenlights
Raucous stories and outlaw wisdom from the Academy Award-winning actor
Published on 6. July 2023
Book
Paperback/Softback
320 pages
978-1-4722-8087-9 (ISBN)
Description
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER* - MILLIONS OF COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE
Gloriously bonkers - Guardian, Best Autobiographies and Memoirs of 2020
A rollicking, contemplative trip - Financial Times
From the Academy Award (R)-winning actor, an unconventional memoir filled with raucous stories, outlaw wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction.
I've been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me.
Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life's challenges - how to get relative with the inevitable - you can enjoy a state of success I call 'catching greenlights.'
So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is fifty years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops.
Hopefully, it's medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot's license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears.
It's a love letter. To life.
It's also a guide to catching more greenlights-and to realising that the yellows and reds eventually turn green too.
Good luck.
*March 2020
Gloriously bonkers - Guardian, Best Autobiographies and Memoirs of 2020
A rollicking, contemplative trip - Financial Times
From the Academy Award (R)-winning actor, an unconventional memoir filled with raucous stories, outlaw wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction.
I've been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me.
Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life's challenges - how to get relative with the inevitable - you can enjoy a state of success I call 'catching greenlights.'
So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is fifty years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops.
Hopefully, it's medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot's license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears.
It's a love letter. To life.
It's also a guide to catching more greenlights-and to realising that the yellows and reds eventually turn green too.
Good luck.
*March 2020
Reviews / Votes
Unflinchingly honest and remarkably candid, Matthew McConaughey's book invites us to grapple with the lessons of his life as he did - and to see that the point was never to win, but to understand. * Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck * McConaughey is a talented actor and a fine writer, but a total genius at living. He attacks life with an exhilarating ferocity. This is a wildly unexpected and delightful book you can't just read, you have to experience. * Lawrence Wright, author of The End of October * It shouldn't surprise you that this book is good, but it will surprise you just how good it is. Wise and entertaining, this is an inspiring memoir and how-to from one of the great outlaw philosophers and artists of our time. * Ryan Holiday, author of The Daily Stoic * A Renaissance man on the big screen, McConaughey shows he is the same on the page. Mystical and spiritual but mostly just wonderful, Greenlights is an inspired memoir that celebrates the idea that it's the journey rather than the destination that will fulfill us. * Michael Connelly, author of Fair Warning * Written with great intensity and rare candor, Greenlights is a whirlwind of wisdom that's as singular and fervent as its author. Read the book, experience the behind-the-scenes adventures, then pursue your own greenlights full throttle. * Shaka Smart, head coach, men's basketball, The University of Texas at Austin * Greenlights is many different books at once: an entertaining autobiography, a delightful adventure story, a very funny comedy, a wise self-help guide, an inspiring argument for love and family, and a candid tale of spiritual and personal discovery. I cannot recommend it highly enough. * John Mackey, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market, co-author of Conscious Leadership * A brilliant memoir that lays bare everything * The Times * A rollicking, contemplative trip * Financial Times * Greenlights is not a memoir, though it tells true stories from his life in chronological order. Nor is it 'an advice book'. It is 'an approach book', bringing together McConaughey's insights from 35 years of writing journals, and more of collecting bumper stickers. * Guardian * Mixing philosophy, 'teachable moments', self-help and Kerouac-inspired memoir, [Greenlights] takes in his remarkable career, finding love and stardom. * Sunday Independent * The Hollywood Star interprets himself. There is derring-do, dope, mayhem and mishaps. * The Times - The Perfect Audiobooks for Lockdown * Enjoyably quirky * Hello! * Gloriously bonkers * Guardian - Best Autobiographies and Memoirs of 2020 * a wild ride through his memories * Evening Standard * His not-quite-memoir offers a smoergasbord of life lessons, anecdotes . . . It would be hard to finish the book and not warm to its author. * The Observer *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Headline Publishing Group
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 196 mm
Width: 128 mm
Thickness: 28 mm
Weight
286 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4722-8087-9 (9781472280879)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Matthew McConaughey
Greenlights
Raucous stories and outlaw wisdom from the Academy Award-winning actor
E-Book
10/2020
1st Edition
Headline
€6.49
Available for download
Person
Academy Award-winning actor and #1 New York Times bestselling author Matthew McConaughey is a husband and a father, an eternal optimist, a hopeful skeptic, and a man of faith who believes that we should all start sellin' Sunday morning like a Saturday night.
McConaughey is a professor of practice at the University of Texas in Austin and co-owner of The Austin FC soccer club. He and his wife, Camila, founded the just keep livin Foundation, which is dedicated to helping boys and girls transform into good men and women through programs that teach the importance of decision-making, health, education, and active living. McConaughey resides with Camila and their three children in Austin, Texas.
McConaughey is a professor of practice at the University of Texas in Austin and co-owner of The Austin FC soccer club. He and his wife, Camila, founded the just keep livin Foundation, which is dedicated to helping boys and girls transform into good men and women through programs that teach the importance of decision-making, health, education, and active living. McConaughey resides with Camila and their three children in Austin, Texas.