Quotes from Ted Hughes

Mary is an apple. Whoever plucks her Nails his heart To the leafless tree.

The difficult thing is not to pick up the information but to recognise it - to accept it into our consciousness. Most of us find it difficult to know what we are feeling about anything. In any situation it is almost impossible to know what is really happening to us. This is one of the penalties of being human and having a brain so swarming with interesting suggestions and ideas and self-distrust.

Bloody footprints staggering through this palace Generation to generation.

And at that very moment, the smile arrived And the crowd, shoving to get a glimpse of a man's soul Stripped to its last shame, Met this smile That rose through his torn roots Touching his lips, altering his eyes And for a moment Mending everything Before it swept out and away across the earth.

That night was nothing but getting to know how smooth your body is. The memory of it goes through me like brandy.

We stir Our self-colour in the pot of colours Which is the world.

The rag rug That had heaped out onto your lap Slid to the floor. There it lay, coiled Between us. However it came, And wherever it found its tongue, its fang, its meaning, It survived our Eden.

The lawn lay like the pristine waiting page Of a prison report. Who would write what upon it I never gave a thought. A dumb creature, looping at the furnace door On its demon's prong, Was a pen already writing Wrong is right, right wrong.

In those days I coerced Oracular assurance In my favour out of every sign.

In writing these poems about relatives, I found it almost impossible to write about the mother. I was stuck. My feelings about my mother, you see, must be too complicated to easily flow into words.

against his back. He swayed forward, on the brink of the high cliff. And his right foot, his enormous iron right foot, lifted – up, out, into space, and the Iron Man stepped forward, off the cliff, into nothingness. CRRRAAAASSSSSSH! Down the cliff the Iron Man came toppling, head over heels. CRASH! CRASH! CRASH! From rock to rock, snag to snag, tumbling slowly.

This is where the staring angels go through. This is where all the stars bow down.

And like a cat in winter at a fire She could not edge close enough To what singed her, and would burn her.

The night snows stars and the earth creaks.

Kurtlar geliyor diye ba??rma o yalanc? çoban gibi,' demekteydim gerçekte. BaÅŸka düÅŸünceler, ürpertici tan?d?k düÅŸünceler Geldiler gerili cambaz ipini geçip: 'Kurtlar geliyor diye ba??rma. Yoksa anlayamam, duymam Ä°ÅŸler gerçekten kötü gittiÄŸinde.

Following a faint stain- On the air to the river's edge These weeds know me and name me to each other Have they seen me before? Do I fit in their world? I seem separate from the ground And not rooted, but dropped out of nothing casually- I've no threads fastening me to anything I can go anywhere I seem to have been given the freedom of this place- What am I then?

But who is stronger than death? Me, _evidently._

When I came to consciousness my whole interest was in wild animals.

What happens in the heart simply happens.

In a way, I suppose, I think of poems as a sort of animal. They have their own life, like animals, by which I mean that they seem quite separate from any person, even from their author, and nothing can be added to them or taken away without maiming and perhaps even killing them. And they have a certain wisdom. They know something special … something perhaps which we are very curious to learn.

Like a newer or much older religion In me alone, to be carried Everywhere with me -- deeper catacombs, And with a stronger God.

The luminous spirit (maybe he is a crowd of spirits), that takes account of everything and gives everything its meaning, is missing, not missing, just incommunicado. But here and there, it may be, we hear it. It is human of course, but it is also everything that lives.

Both Hawk and Pike (like the Bull) are motionless, or almost motionless. In a planned, straightforward way, I began them as a series in which they would be angels – hanging in the radiant glory around the creator's throne, composed of terrific, holy power (there's a line in 'Hawk Roosting' almost verbatim from Job), but either quite still, or moving only very slowly – at peace, and actually composed of the glowing substance of the law. Like Sons of God.

And as abruptly She had gone on, hither, thither, Among the tables and vanished, leaving her words Heavier than the Cathedral, Bigger, darker, founded far deeper - My whole body taking their weight Like a newer or much older religion In me alone, to be carried Everywhere with me - deeper catacombs. And with a stronger God.