Quotes from Dylan Thomas

Oh, isn't life a terrible thing, thank God?

It is the measure of my individual struggle from darkness toward some measure of light.

And honored among wagons I was prince of the apple towns.

Light breaks where no sun shines;Where no sea runs, the waters of the heartPush in their tides.

And honored among foxes and pheasants by the gay houseUnder the new-made clouds and happy as the heart was long,In the sun born over and over,I ran my heedless ways.

In the sun that is young once only,Time let me play and beGolden in the mercy of his means.

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;These five kings did a king to death.

And death shall have no dominion.

A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black.

Don't be too harsh to these poems until they're typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flowerDrives my green age; that blasts the roots of treesIs my destroyer.And I am dumb to tell the crooked roseMy youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

And the sabbath rang slowlyIn the pebbles of the holy streams.

They dance between their arclamps and our skull,Impose their shots, throwing the nights away.We watch the show of shadows kiss or kill,Flavoured of celluloid give love the lie.

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughsAbout the lilting house and happy as the grass was green.

Go on thinking that you don't need to be read and you'll find that it may become quite true: no one will feel the need tom read it because it is written for yourself alone and the public won't feel any impulse to gate crash such a private party.

Forgotten mornings when he walked with his motherThrough the parablesOf sunlightAnd the legend of the green chapels.

You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it tick.... You're back with the mystery of having been moved by words. The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps... so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in.

An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do.

Someone's boring me. I think it's me.

Youth calls to age across the tired years: 'What have you found,' he cries, 'what have you sought?" 'What have you found,' age answers through his tears, 'What have you sought.

And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt, Miss Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobbledstreets silent and the hunched courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.

They shall have stars at elbow and foot; Though they go mad they shall be sane, Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.