Carol Ann Duffy

“We will tire each other out, making our homes in one another’s arms.”

“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.”

“I'll be left writing picture books and fairy tales.”

“I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom, on the stairs, everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it.”

“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.”

“I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite.”

“bees are the batteries of orchards, gardens, guard them.”

“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, seas where we would dive for pearls. My lover’s words were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme to his, now echo, assonance; his touch a verb dancing in the centre o...”

“along with the rest of our helpless world; and, O, if you could, you would, where lovers walked, sell off trees and not give a flying fuck for the muted mausoleums of the bees.”