Quotes By Carol Ann Duffy
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 Duffy
I write in that space between Ella's childhood and mine. I know it all sounds a bit sinister.
Carol Ann Duffy
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
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 Duffy
I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite.
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
I still have a feeling that I haven't written the best that I can write. 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 Duffy
Having a child takes you back to all those parts of your own childhood that you had hidden away.
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 Duffy
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 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 Duffy
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
The poem is the literary form of the 21st century. It's able to connect young people in a deep way to language... it's language as play.
Carol Ann Duffy
If we think of what's up ahead, with climate change and wars over water, it's very frightening.
Carol Ann Duffy
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 Duffy
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 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
I think the dangers are different now. Our abuse of the planet and our resources is an anxiety.
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 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