Poems & Prayers

By: Matthew McConaughey

Narrated by: Matthew McConaughey

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Academy Award–winning actor and author of Greenlights comes an inspiring, faith-filled, and often hilarious collection of personal poetry and prayers about navigating the rodeo of life and chasing down the original dream, belief.

My prayers are my poems are my prayers.

I’ve always relied on logic to make sense of myself and the world.

A prescriptionist at heart, I’ve always looked to reason to find the rhyme, the practical to get to the mystical, the choreography to find the dance, the proof to get to the truth, and reality to get to the dream.

I’ve been finding that tougher to do lately. It’s more than hard to know what to believe in; it’s hard to believe.

But I don’t want to quit believing, and I don’t want to stop believing in . . . humanity, you, myself, our potential.

I think it’s time for us to flip the script on what’s historically been our means of making sense, and instead open our aperture to enchantment and look to faith, belief, and dreams for our reality.

Let’s sing more than we might make sense, believe in more than the world can conclude, get more impressed with the wow instead of the how, let inspiration interrupt our appointments, dream our way to reality, serve some soul food to our hungry heads, put proof on the shelf for a season, and rhyme our way to reason.

Forget logic, certainty, owning, or making a start-up company of it; let’s go beyond what we can merely imagine, and believe, in the poetry of life.

Critic reviews

“Imagine a country-and-western song that stops in at every bar on Saturday night before finding itself in the pew on Sunday morning, and you’re halfway there. This is wisdom earned the hard way and repaid with compound interest . . . So much in his book is memorable . . . No more frisky—or well-intentioned—volume will grace the best-seller lists this season.”—Pico Ayer, Air Mail

“Utterly confident. . . . These verses unlocked joy.”—Texas Monthly

“Beguiling . . . likely to be the bestselling book of poetry published this year.”—The Washington Post

“Some [poems] are funny, some are jagged, many are uncomfortably honest. . . . That willingness to laugh at himself might be what gives Poems and Prayers its unexpected charm. . . . . McConaughey isn’t selling solutions. He’s documenting a wrestle. And somehow, that honesty feels like the most convincing testimony of all.”—Relevant

“A joy.”—Vulture

“Poems & Prayers is like Bob Dylan riding shotgun with Billy Graham on a road trip through the soul.”—Greg McKeown, New York Times bestselling author of Essentialism and Effortless



Praise for Greenlights

“McConaughey’s own story is arguably more interesting than any character he has embodied on the silver screen over the decades.”—USA Today

“Both calming and laugh, laugh, laugh-out-loud funny.”—The Washington Post

“Delightfully voicey.”—GQ

“A rollicking, contemplative trip.”—Financial Times

“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

inspired and impressed

Entertaining and insightful. A privilege to listen to as it's read by the cool and laid back, the man himself.

Matthew’s reading

My sister told me this book had been released. I bought and loved listening to Green Lights, so I didn’t hesitate to purchase this one. I think I will also buy the actual book as I love what it says. Matthew is an exceptional talent and someone I have liked for years. Can’t wait for his next book.

I love that he narrates his own stories!

I enjoy hearing him reading his own his poetry and stories. This is the second audible production that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed from him. His work seems very genuine.

The way they spoke the inner me! Spoke to my soul!!! Feed me a dose of acceptance and was very freeing!!

Mathew’s voice is so soothing right up there with James Earle Jones and Morgan Freeman!!!!

Unique flow of wording and phrasing

Enjoyed it all I can really relate to all expressions of prayer and poems Mike Stroud