Quotes by Ted Hughes

“The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't li...”

“There is the inner life, which is the world of final reality, the world of memory, emotion, imagination, intelligence, and natural common sense, and which goes on all the time like the heartbeat. T...”

“It is not enough to say the crow flies purposefully, or heavily, or rowingly, or whatever. There are no words to capture the infinite depth of crowiness in the crow's flight. All we can do is use a...”

“He could not stand. It was notThat he could not thrive, he was bornWith everything but the will That can be deformed, just like a limb.Death was more interesting to him.Life could not get his atten...”

“If you're all so peaceful up there, how did you get such greedy and cruel ideas?"The dragon was silent for a long time after this question. And at last he said: "It just came over me. I don't know ...”

“Nobody wanted your dance,Nobody wanted your strange glitter, your flounderingDrowning life and your effort to save yourself,Treading water, dancing the dark turmoil,Looking for something to give.”

“The inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded case, the voice of pain and the physical body, so to speak, of poetry, is the treatment by which the poet tries to reco...”

“I think it was Milosz, the Polish poet, who when he lay in a doorway and watched the bullets lifting the cobbles out of the street beside him realised that most poetry is not equipped for life in a...”

“Imagine what you are writing about. See it and live it. Do not think it up laboriously, as if you were working out mental arithmetic. Just look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to it, turn yoursel...”

“Whats writing really about? Its about trying to take fuller possession of the reality of your life.”

“Even the most misfitting childWho's chanced upon the library's worth,Sits with the genius of the EarthAnd turns the key to the whole world.--"Hear It Again”

“And that's how we measure out our real respect for peopleby the degree of feeling they can register, the voltage of life they can carry and tolerateand enjoy. End of sermon. As Buddha says: live li...”

“The difference between a fairly interesting writer and a fascinating writer is that the fascinating writer has a better nose for what genuinely excites him, he is hotter on the trail, he has a bett...”

“There is no correct way to write a novel, or rather, there is only one, and that one way is to make it interesting. That is very easily said, but how do you make your writing interesting?The answer...”

“What I am going to propose is that you write a novel.As you know, the practical advantages of being able to write out your thoughts fluently are very great. For one thing, when you are used to writ...”

“In writing these poems about relatives, I found it almost impossible to write about the mother. I was stuck. My feelings about my mother, you see, must be too complicated to easily flow into words.”

“If you were writing a book to be published, you might be restrained by the fear that your wild imaginings might drive some people crazy. As it is, you are free, you can go off in any direction what...”

“The difficult thing is not to pick up the information but to recognise it - to accept it into our consciousness. Most of us find it difficult to know what we are feeling about anything. In any situ...”

“But artists didn't need to achieve "firsts", and Hughes wanted to be an artist.”

“Well, the terrible fact is that though we are all more or less thinking of something or other all the time, some of us are thinking more and some less.Some brains are battling and working and remem...”