Quotes By 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
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
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
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 Duffy
Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings.
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
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
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
I think the dangers are different now. Our abuse of the planet and our resources is an anxiety.
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
Edinburgh is my favourite city. We'll be doing a lot of children's theatre and galleries.
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
I write in that space between Ella's childhood and mine. I know it all sounds a bit sinister.
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