Quotes from Carol Ann Duffy

I think of him in certain lights, dawn, late afternoon,...

The living walk by the edge of a vast lake near the wise, drowned silence of the dead.

Not a red rose or a satin heart. I give you an onion. It is a moon wrapped in brown paper, It promises light Like the careful undressing of love. Here. It will blind you with tears Like a lover.

I tend the mobile now like an injured bird We text, text, text our significant words. I re-read your first, your second, your third, look for your small xx, feeling absurd. The codes we send arrive with a broken chord. I try to picture your hands, their image is blurred. Nothing my thumbs press will ever be heard. "Text

When did your name change from a proper noun to a charm? Its three vowels like jewels on the thread of my breath. Its consonants brushing my mouth like a kiss. I love your name. I say it again and again in this summer rain. I see it, discreet in the alphabet, like a wish. I pray it into the night till its letters are light. I hear your name rhyming, rhyming, rhyming with everything. "Name

Look, we all have wishes; granted. But who has wishes granted?

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.

A whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head Warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood.

I stared in the mirror. Love gone bad showed me a Gorgon. I stared at a dragon. Fire spewed from the mouth of a mountain. And here you come with a shield for a heart and a sword for a tongue and your girls, your girls. Wasn't I beautiful Wasn't I fragrant and young? Look at me now.

Light gatherer. You fell from a star into my lap, the soft lamp at the bedside mirrored in you, and now you shine like a snowgirl, a buttercup under a chin, the wide blue yonder you squeal at and fly in

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

C'est la vie. When I got ill, it hurt like hell. I bought a kidney with my credit card, then I got well. I keep Faust's secret still –the clever, cunning, callous bastard didn't have a soul to sell.

When I was done, and bloody to the wrist, I squatted down among the murdered music of the bells and pissed.

The Devil was evil, mad, but I was the Devil's wife which made me worse. I howled in my cell. If the Devil was gone then how could this be hell?

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer utters itself.

I swear your love would raise me out of my grave, in my flesh and blood, like Lazarus; hungry for this, and this, and this, your living kiss.

The curtains stir. There you are on the bed, like a gift. Like a touchable dream.

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer utters itself. So, a woman will lift her head from the sieve of her hands and stare at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

I uttered my prayer: Give me your honey. Bless my tongue with rhyme, poetry, song.

his touch a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.

I hold him in the casket of my widow's head as he held me upon that next best bed.

For me, poetry is the music of being human

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

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