Carol Ann Duffy Quotations

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.

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.

Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings.

I write in that space between Ella's childhood and mine. I know it all sounds a bit sinister.

I still read Donne, particularly his love poems

It's always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated, unlike poetry, which is more equal

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.

Every day is a gift with a child, no matter what problems you have

Between 9am and 3pm is when I work most intensely

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.

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.

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.

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.

I'll be left writing picture books and fairy tales

My prose is turgid, it just hasn't got any energy

I think the dangers are different now. Our abuse of the planet and our resources is an anxiety

Poetry and prayer are very similar

Having a child takes you back to all those parts of your own childhood that you had hidden away.

I always wanted a child. Being a mother is the central thing in my life.

Poets sing our human music for us.

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.

What do I haveto help me, without spell or prayer,endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous,the death of love?

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.

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.

I see the shape of the poem before I start writing, and the writing is just the process of arriving at the shape.

I like to think that I'm a sort of poet for our times.

I am always pleased to be asked to write a poem.

Time hates love, wants love poor,/but love spins gold, gold, gold from straw.

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

Better off dead than giving in; not taking what you want.

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

You have me like a drawing, erased, coloured in, untitled, signed by your tongue.

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.

The stars are filming us for no one.

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.

I always say that I'll have a go and see whether the poem works and if it does, then fine.

Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen.

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.

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.

How would you prepare to die on a perfect April evening?

If we think of what's up ahead, with climate change and wars over water, it's very frightening.

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.

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.

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

Edinburgh is my favourite city. We'll be doing a lot of children's theatre and galleries.