Quotes by Carol Ann Duffy

“What will you do now with the gift of your left life?”

“The bed we loved in was a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seaswhere we would dive for pearls. My lovers wordswere shooting stars which fell to earth as kisseson these lip...”

“Loves language starts, stops, starts; the right words flowing or clotting in the heart.”

“But behind each player sttod a line of ghosts unable to win. Eve. Ashputtel. Marilyn Monroe. Rapunzel slashing wildly at her hair. Bessie Smith unloved and down and out. Bluebeard's wives, Henry VI...”

“I'm not the first or the lastto stand on a hillock,watching the man she marriedprove to the worldhe's a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pi”

“Then he started his period.One week in bed.Two doctors in.Three painkillers four times a day.And later a letter to the powers-that-bedemanding full-paid menstrual leave twelve weeks per year.”

“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.”

“Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head, warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood.”

“I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way.”

“But life, they said, means life. Dying inside.The Devil was evil, mad, but I was the Devil's wifewhich made me worse. I howled in my cell.If the Devil is gone then how could this be hell?”

“For this,let gardens grow, where beelines end,sighing in roses, saffron blooms, buddleia;where bees pray on their knees, sing, praisein pear trees, plum trees; beesare the batteries of orchards, ga...”

“At childhoods end, the houses petered outinto playing fields, the factory, allotmentskept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men, the silent railway line, the hermits caravan, till you came at l...”

“I found the words at the back of a drawer,wrapped in black cloth, like three ringsslipped from a dead womans hand, cold,dull gold. I had held them before,years ago,then put them away, forgetting wh...”

“Loves times beggar, but even a single hour,bright as a dropped coin, makes love rich.We find an hour together, spend it not on flowersor wine, but the whole of the summer sky and a grass ditch.For ...”

“I tend the mobile nowlike an injured birdWe text, text, textour significant words.I re-read your first,your second, your third,look for your small xx,feeling absurd.The codes we sendarrive with a b...”

“When did your namechange from a proper nounto a charm?Its three vowelslike jewelson the thread of my breath.Its consonantsbrushing my mouthlike a kiss.I love your name.I say it again and againin th...”

“Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head,so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name,like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllableslike a c...”

“Give me, you said, on our very first night,the forest. I rose from the bed and went out,and when I returned, you listened, enthralled,to the shadowy story I told.Give me the river,you asked the nex...”

“Poets sing our human music for us.”

“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.”