1.
I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way.
Carol Ann Duffy
2.
Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings.
Carol Ann Duffy
3.
For me, poetry is the music of being human. And also a time machine by which we can travel to who we are and to who we will become.
Carol Ann Duffy
4.
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.
Carol Ann Duffy
5.
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.
Carol Ann Duffy
6.
I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite.
Carol Ann Duffy
7.
Poetry and prayer are very similar.
Carol Ann Duffy
8.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
Carol Ann Duffy
9.
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.
Carol Ann Duffy
10.
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
11.
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.
Carol Ann Duffy
12.
It's always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated, unlike poetry, which is more equal
Carol Ann Duffy
13.
What will you do now with the gift of your left life?
Carol Ann Duffy
14.
I see the shape of the poem before I start writing, and the writing is just the process of arriving at the shape.
Carol Ann Duffy
15.
I think all poets must feel this: that there is constantly something new to be discovered in the language. It's like a thrilling encounter, and you can find things.
Carol Ann Duffy
16.
She stood upon a continent of ice, which sparkled between sea and sky, endless and dazzling, as though the world kept all its treasure there; a scale which balanced poetry and prayer.
Carol Ann Duffy
17.
I like to think that I'm a sort of poet for our times.
Carol Ann Duffy
18.
My prose is turgid, it just hasn't got any energy
Carol Ann Duffy
19.
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.
Carol Ann Duffy
20.
I think poetry can help children deal with the other subjects on the curriculum by enabling them to see a subject in a new way.
Carol Ann Duffy
21.
I think the dangers are different now. Our abuse of the planet and our resources is an anxiety.
Carol Ann Duffy
22.
The poem is a form of texting... it's the original text. It's a perfecting of a feeling in language - it's a way of saying more with less, just as texting is.
Carol Ann Duffy
23.
Poets sing our human music for us.
Carol Ann Duffy
24.
I am always pleased to be asked to write a poem.
Carol Ann Duffy
25.
I still read Donne, particularly his love poems
Carol Ann Duffy
26.
I'll be left writing picture books and fairy tales
Carol Ann Duffy
27.
I always wanted a child. Being a mother is the central thing in my life.
Carol Ann Duffy
28.
Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen.
Carol Ann Duffy
29.
If we think of what's up ahead, with climate change and wars over water, it's very frightening.
Carol Ann Duffy
30.
I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom, on the stairs, everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it.
Carol Ann Duffy
31.
Time hates love, wants love poor,/but love spins gold, gold, gold from straw.
Carol Ann Duffy
32.
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.
Carol Ann Duffy
33.
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.
Carol Ann Duffy
34.
Where I lived - winter and hard earth.I sat in my cold stone roomchoosing tough words, granite, flint,to break the ice. My broken heart -I tried that, but it skimmed,flat, over the frozen lake.She came from a long, long way,but I saw her at last, walking,my daughter, my girl, across the fields,In bare feet, bringing all spring's flowersto her mother's house. I swearthe air softened and warmed as she moved,the blue sky smiling, none too soon,with the small shy mouth of a new moon.
Carol Ann Duffy
35.
You have me like a drawing, erased, coloured in, untitled, signed by your tongue.
Carol Ann Duffy
36.
Better off dead than giving in; not taking what you want.
Carol Ann Duffy
37.
What do I haveto help me, without spell or prayer,endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous,the death of love?
Carol Ann Duffy
38.
The stars are filming us for no one.
Carol Ann Duffy
39.
If I felt, in the event of a royal wedding, inspired to write about people coming together in marriage or civil partnership, I would just be grateful to have an idea for the poem. And if I didn't, I'd ignore it.
Carol Ann Duffy
40.
Between 9am and 3pm is when I work most intensely
Carol Ann Duffy
41.
Having a child takes you back to all those parts of your own childhood that you had hidden away.
Carol Ann Duffy
42.
I always say that I'll have a go and see whether the poem works and if it does, then fine.
Carol Ann Duffy
43.
Every day is a gift with a child, no matter what problems you have.
Carol Ann Duffy
44.
How would you prepare to die on a perfect April evening?
Carol Ann Duffy