Quotes by Andrew Motion

“Poems are a hotline to our hearts, and we forget this emotional power at our peril.”

“... each of us describes our existence by means of objects which are indifferent to us, which survive us, and which are then thrown back into the common stock from which they are soon gathered agai...”

“Those who say we should dismantle the role of Poet Laureate altogether, the trick they miss is that being called this thing, with the weight of tradition behind it, and with the association of the ...”

“I like eating out. I like buying beautiful paintings and being surrounded by beautiful things. I have to finance that life. I can barely afford a pension scheme because I don't make enough money.”

“I deeply adored my mum. She was an extraordinary person, even for the prejudice I'm likely to have. She was beautiful, amusing, a tremendous elaborator of things into comic proportions and extravag...”

“Poetry is at the centre of my life, too, emotionally speaking, and intellectually speaking - it's just that I'm one of those people who enjoy doing other stuff as well.”

“I'm not precisely saying that a really good board meeting at the MLA (Museums, Libraries and Archives Coucil) makes me want to go and write poetry, but there is a pleasure in doing that sort of thi...”

“I wish I'd been better able to resist the sense of obligation to write some of the poems I did. It's in the nature of commissioned work to be written too much from the side of your mind that knows ...”

“In a general way, I want to be a kind of flag-waver, bunting hanger-up, drum-beater, you name it, for poetry.”

“Thanks partly to the kind of poets that we now have and partly to funding, there's been a gigantic shift in the way poetry is perceived... Poems on the Underground, poets in schools, football clubs...”

“I wanted to reimagine the role, in a way that was respectful of its traditional responsibilities but made them part of a wider pattern of poetry about national incidents, events, preoccupations; an...”

“More people are reading poetry now than at any time in the history of the human race.”

“Poets know their own poems in a way and to a depth that is unique.. even if they mumble a bit ..their delivery will still have important things to tell us.”

“In the swirl of its poolthe home-coming salmonhas no intuitionof anything changed.”

“By day the appalling loose beautyof prowling floes:lions’ heads, dragons, crucifix-wrecks,and a thing like a blown rose.”