Carol Ann Duffy quotes

Carol Ann Duffy is a British poet and playwright, renowned for her accessible and thought-provoking verse. Her works often explore themes of identity, love, and social commentary, captivating a wide readership. She was the first woman to be appointed as the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom. Here are 42 of her quotes:

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)
As anyone who has the slightest knowledge of my work knows, I have little in common with Larkin, who was tall, taciturn and thin-on-top, and unlike him I laugh, nay, sneer, in the face of death. I will concede one point: we are both lesbian poets. View quote
Carol Ann Duffy
What do I haveto help me, without spell or prayer,endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous,the death of love? View quote
Carol Ann Duffy
I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Carol Ann Duffy
Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen. View quote
Carol Ann Duffy
You have me like a drawing, erased, coloured in, untitled, signed by your tongue. View quote
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. View quote
Carol Ann Duffy
The stars are filming us for no one. View quote
Carol Ann Duffy
One saw I was alive. Loosened his belt. My bowels opened in a ragged gape of fear. Between the gap of corpses I could see a child. The soldiers laughed. Only a matter of days separate this from acts of torture now. They shot her in the eye. (Carol Ann Duffy)
Here. It will blind you with tears like a lover. It will make your reflection a wobbling photo of grief. View quote
Carol Ann Duffy
I cannot say where you are. Unreachable by prayer, even if poems are prayers. Unseeable in the air, even if souls are stars. View quote
Carol Ann Duffy
Somewhere on the other side of this wide night and the distance between us, I am thinking of you. The room is turning slowly away from the moon. View quote
Carol Ann Duffy
Light gatherer. You fell from a star into my lap, the soft lamp at the bedside mirrored in you, and now you shine like a snowgirl, a buttercup under a chin, the wide blue yonder you squeal at and fly in. View quote
Carol Ann Duffy
Not a red rose or a satin heart. I give you an onion. It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. It promises light like the careful undressing of love...I am trying to be truthful. View quote
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. View quote
Carol Ann Duffy
There'll be what you might call a moment of inspiration – a way of seeing or feeling or remembering, an instance or a person that's made a large impression. 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. View quote
Carol Ann Duffy
This is the word tightrope. Now imagine a man, inching across it in the space between our thoughts. He holds our breath.There is no word net.You want him to fall, don't you? I guessed as much; he teeters but succeeds. The word applause is written all over him. View quote
Carol Ann Duffy
I'm not the first or the last to stand on a hillock, watching the man she married prove to the world he's a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock. View quote
Carol Ann Duffy
Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings. (Carol Ann Duffy)
Poetry and prayer are very similar. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Carol Ann Duffy