Carol Ann Duffy quotes
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“I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way.”
-- Carol Ann DuffySource : "Winning lines" by Peter Forbes, www.theguardian.com. August 30, 2002.
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“I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite.”
-- Carol Ann DuffySource : "Christmas Carol" by Hephzibah Anderson, www.theguardian.com. December 3, 2005.
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“Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings.”
-- Carol Ann Duffy -
“Christmas is taken very seriously in this household. I believe in Father Christmas, and there's no way I'd do anything to undermine that belief.”
-- Carol Ann DuffySource : "Christmas Carol". Interview with Hephzibah Anderson, www.theguardian.com. December 3, 2005.
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“If we think of what's up ahead, with climate change and wars over water, it's very frightening.”
-- Carol Ann Duffy -
“When you have a child, your previous life seems like someone else's. It's like living in a house and suddenly finding a room you didn't know was there, full of treasure and light”
-- Carol Ann DuffySource : "Christmas Carol". Interview with Hephzibah Anderson, www.theguardian.com. December 04, 2005.
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“I'll be left writing picture books and fairy tales”
-- Carol Ann Duffy -
“My prose is turgid, it just hasn't got any energy”
-- Carol Ann Duffy -
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“I still read Donne, particularly his love poems”
-- Carol Ann Duffy -
“I think the dangers are different now. Our abuse of the planet and our resources is an anxiety”
-- Carol Ann Duffy -
“Poetry and prayer are very similar”
-- Carol Ann DuffySource : "Christmas Carol" by Hephzibah Anderson, www.theguardian.com. December 3, 2005.
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“Poetry, above all is a series of intense moments  its power is not in narrative. I'm not dealing with facts, I'm dealing with emotion.”
-- Carol Ann Duffy -
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“The moment of inspiration can come from memory, or language, or the imagination, or experience - anything that makes an impression forcibly enough for language to form.”
-- Carol Ann DuffySource : "I still haven't written the best I can" by Rachel Cooke, www.theguardian.com. May 2, 2009.
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“Where I lived - winter and hard earth.I sat in my cold stone roomchoosing tough words, granite, flint,to break the ice. My broken heart -I tried that, but it skimmed,flat, over the frozen lake.She came from a long, long way,but I saw her at last, walking,my daughter, my girl, across the fields,In bare feet, bringing all spring's flowersto her mother's house. I swearthe air softened and warmed as she moved,the blue sky smiling, none too soon,with the small shy mouth of a new moon.”
-- Carol Ann Duffy -
“What do I haveto help me, without spell or prayer,endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous,the death of love?”
-- Carol Ann Duffy -
“As anyone who has the slightest knowledge of my work knows, I have little in common with Larkin, who was tall, taciturn and thin-on-top, and unlike him I laugh, nay, sneer, in the face of death. I will concede one point: we are both lesbian poets.”
-- Carol Ann DuffySource : "Winning Lines". Interview with Peter Forbes, www.theguardian.com. August 31, 2002.
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“The poem is a form of texting... it's the original text. It's a perfecting of a feeling in language - it's a way of saying more with less, just as texting is.”
-- Carol Ann DuffySource : "Carol Ann Duffy: 'Poems are a form of texting'". Interview with Joanna Moorhead, www.theguardian.com. September 5, 2011.
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“I think all poets must feel this: that there is constantly something new to be discovered in the language. It's like a thrilling encounter, and you can find things.”
-- Carol Ann DuffySource : "I still haven't written the best I can" by Rachel Cooke, www.theguardian.com. May 2, 2009.
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“I see the shape of the poem before I start writing, and the writing is just the process of arriving at the shape.”
-- Carol Ann DuffySource : "I still haven't written the best I can" by Rachel Cooke, www.theguardian.com. May 2, 2009.
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“I like to think that I'm a sort of poet for our times.”
-- Carol Ann DuffySource : Carol Ann Duffy (2015). “Collected Poems”, p.122, Pan Macmillan
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“I grew up in a bookless house - my parents didn't read poetry, so if I hadn't had the chance to experience it at school I'd never have experienced it. But I loved English, and I was very lucky in that I had inspirational English teachers, Miss Scriven and Mr. Walker, and they liked us to learn poems by heart, which I found I loved doing.”
-- Carol Ann DuffySource : "Carol Ann Duffy: 'Poems are a form of texting" by Joanna Moorhead, www.theguardian.com. September 5, 2011.
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“Every day is a gift with a child, no matter what problems you have”
-- Carol Ann Duffy -
“Between 9am and 3pm is when I work most intensely”
-- Carol Ann Duffy -
“I think poetry can help children deal with the other subjects on the curriculum by enabling them to see a subject in a new way.”
-- Carol Ann Duffy -
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“She stood upon a continent of ice, which sparkled between sea and sky, endless and dazzling, as though the world kept all its treasure there; a scale which balanced poetry and prayer.”
-- Carol Ann DuffySource : Carol Ann Duffy (2009). “Mrs. Scrooge: A Christmas Poem”, p.31, Simon and Schuster
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“You have me like a drawing, erased, coloured in, untitled, signed by your tongue.”
-- Carol Ann DuffySource : Carol Ann Duffy (2013). “Mean Time”, p.33, Pan Macmillan
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“What will you do now with the gift of your left life?”
-- Carol Ann DuffySource : Carol Ann Duffy (2012). “The Bees”, p.104, Pan Macmillan
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“Better off dead than giving in; not taking what you want.”
-- Carol Ann DuffySource : Carol Ann Duffy (2016). “Selling Manhattan”, p.33, Pan Macmillan
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“Like the sand and the oyster, it's a creative irritant. In each poem, I'm trying to reveal a truth, so it can't have a fictional beginning.”
-- Carol Ann DuffySource : "Christmas Carol" by Hephzibah Anderson, www.theguardian.com. December 3, 2005.
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“I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom, on the stairs, everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it.”
-- Carol Ann Duffy -
“You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what's in your heart.”
-- Carol Ann DuffySource : "Carol Ann Duffy: 'Poetry is in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus .. or just what's in your heart'". www.mirror.co.uk. May 2, 2009.
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“It's always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated, unlike poetry, which is more equal”
-- Carol Ann Duffy -
“How would you prepare to die on a perfect April evening?”
-- Carol Ann Duffy -
“Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen.”
-- Carol Ann Duffy -
“It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.”
-- Carol Ann DuffySource : Carol Ann Duffy (2013). “Mean Time”, p.30, Pan Macmillan
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“If I felt, in the event of a royal wedding, inspired to write about people coming together in marriage or civil partnership, I would just be grateful to have an idea for the poem. And if I didn't, I'd ignore it.”
-- Carol Ann Duffy -
“I always say that I'll have a go and see whether the poem works and if it does, then fine.”
-- Carol Ann Duffy -
“Time hates love, wants love poor,/but love spins gold, gold, gold from straw.”
-- Carol Ann Duffy -
“I am always pleased to be asked to write a poem.”
-- Carol Ann Duffy -
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“I always wanted a child. Being a mother is the central thing in my life.”
-- Carol Ann Duffy -
“Having a child takes you back to all those parts of your own childhood that you had hidden away.”
-- Carol Ann Duffy
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