Quotes from Don Paterson

I can see exactly what not to do at the moment. No doubt through the usual process of elimination I'll arrive at my favourite strategy of total paralysis.

Inconveniently, books are all the pages in them, not just the ones you choose to read.

While you spoke, it reached into the room switching off the mirrors in their frames and undeveloping your photographs; it gently drew a knife across the threads that tied your keepsakes to the things they kept

Fate's book, but my italics.

After a long period of reflection, he decided that he was in fact right yet again.

Mediocre art is far worse than bad art. Bad art does not waste our time.

Falling and flying are near identical sensations, in all but one final detail.

Critics all have this idea that authors inhabit another dimensional realm, right up to their first smack in the mouth - which feels to them quite miraculous, being their sex-dream come true.

forget the ink, the milk, the blood - all was washed clean with the flood we rose up from the falling waters the fallen rain's own sons and daughters and none of this, none of this matters.

The aphorism is already a shadow of itself.

Anything that elicits an immediate nod of recognition has only reconfirmed a prejudice.

Mediocre art is far worse than bad art. Bad art does not waste our time.