Carol Ann Duffy Quotes

I like to think that I'm a sort of poet for our times. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

If poetry could truly tell it backwards, then it would. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

I still have a feeling that I haven't written the best that I can write. 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. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

I think of him in certain lights, dawn, late afternoon,... ~ Carol Ann Duffy

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 ~ Carol Ann Duffy

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

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. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

The Latin names of plants blur like belief. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

I found the words at the back of a drawer,
wrapped in black cloth, like three rings
slipped from a dead woman's hand, cold,
dull gold. I had held them before,

years ago,
then put them away, forgetting whatever it was
I could use them to say. I touched the first to my lips,
like a pledge, like a kiss,

and my breath
warmed them, the words I needed to utter this, small words,
and few. I rubbed at them till they gleamed in my palm –
I love you, I love you, I love you –
as though they were new. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

Again, the endless northern rain between us
like a veil. Tonight, I know exactly where you are,
which row, which seat. I stand at my back door.
The light pollution blindfolds every star.

I hold my hand out to the rain, simply to feel it, wet
and literal. It spills and tumbles in my palm,
a broken rosary. Devotion to you lets me see
the concert hall, lit up, the other side of town,

then see you leave there, one of hundreds in the dark,
your black umbrella raised. If rain were words, could talk,
somehow, against your skin, I'd say look up, let it utter
on your face. Now hear my love for you. Now walk.

- Bridgewater Hall ~ Carol Ann Duffy

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

Where I lived - winter and hard earth.
I sat in my cold stone room
choosing 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 flowers
to her mother's house. I swear
the air softened and warmed as she moved,
the blue sky smiling, none too soon,
with the small shy mouth of a new moon. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

No jewel hold a candle to the cuckoo spit hung from the blade of grass at your ear. No chandelier see you better lit than here. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

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

There are not enough faces. Your own gapes back
at you on someone else, but paler, then the moment
when you see the next one and forget yourself.

It must be dreams that makes us different, must be
private cells inside a common skull.
One has the other's look and has another memory.

Despair stares out from tube-trains at itself
running on the platform for the closing door.
Everyone you meet is telling wordless barefaced truths.

Sometimes the crowd yields one you put a name to,
snapping fiction into fact. Mostly your lover passes in the rain and does not know you when you speak.

- I Remember Me ~ Carol Ann Duffy

Bridgewater Hall
Again, the endless northern rain between us
like a veil. Tonight, I know exactly where you are,
which row, which seat. I stand at my back door.
The light pollution blindfolds every star.
I hold my hand out to the rain, simply to feel it, wet
and literal. It spills and tumbles in my palm,
a broken rosary. Devotion to you lets me see
the concert hall, lit up, the other side of town,
then see you leave there, one of hundreds in the dark,
your black umbrella raised. If rain were words, could talk,
somehow, against your skin, I'd say look up, let it utter
on your face. Now hear my love for you. Now walk. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

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. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

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. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

Went to the Zoo, I said to Him- Something about that chimpanzee over there reminds me of you. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed.

- Anne Hathaway ~ Carol Ann Duffy

Better off dead than giving in; not taking what you want. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

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. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

Anne Hathaway
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

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. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

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. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

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

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

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. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

I took an axe
To a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon
To see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf
As he slept. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

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. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

Then he started his period. One week in bed. Two doctors in. Three painkillers four times a day. And later a letter to the powers that be demanding full-paid menstrual leave twelve weeks per year I see him still, his selfish pale face peering at the moon through the bathroom window. The curse, he said, the curse. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

I'm not the first or the last
to stand on a hillock,
watching the man she married
prove to the world
he's a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock.

- Mrs Icarus ~ Carol Ann Duffy

And here you come
with a shield for a heart
and a sword for a tongue ~ Carol Ann Duffy

Poetry and prayer are very similar. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

Between 9am and 3pm is when I work most intensely. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

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

Girls, I was dead and down
in the Underworld, a shade,
a shadow of my former self, nowhen.
It was a place where language stopped,
a black full stop, a black hole
Where the words had to come to an end.
And end they did there,
last words,
famous or not.
It suited me down to the ground.

So imagine me there,
unavailable,
out of this world,
then picture my face in that place
of Eternal Repose,
in the one place you'd think a girl would be safe
from the kind of a man
who follows her round
writing poems,
hovers about
while she reads them,
calls her His Muse,
and once sulked for a night and a day
because she remarked on his weakness for abstract nouns.
Just picture my face
when I heard -
Ye Gods -
a familiar knock-knock at Death's door.

Him.
Big O.
Larger than life.
With his lyre
and a poem to pitch, with me as the prize.

Things were different back then.
For the men, verse-wise,
Big O was the boy. Legendary.
The blurb on the back of his books claimed
that animals,
aardvark to zebra,
flocked to his side when he sang,
fish leapt in their shoals
at the sound of his voice,
even the mute, sullen stones at his feet
wept wee, silver tears.

Bollocks. (I'd done all the typing myself,
I should know.)
And given my time all over again,
rest a ~ Carol Ann Duffy

What will you do now with the gift of your left life? ~ Carol Ann Duffy

I always wanted a child. Being a mother is the central thing in my life. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

The stars are filming us for no one. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

In the convent, y'all,
I tend the gardens,
watch things grow,
pray for the immortal soul
of rock 'n' roll.

They call me
Sister Presley here,
The Reverend Mother
digs the way I move my hips
just like my brother.

Gregorian chant
drifts out across the herbs
Pascha nostrum immolatus est...
I wear a simple habit,
darkish hues,

a wimple with a novice-sewn
lace band, a rosary,
a chain of keys,
a pair of good and sturdy
blue suede shoes.

I think of it
as Graceland here,
a land of grace.
It puts my trademark slow lopsided smile
back on my face.

Lawdy.
I'm alive and well.
Long time since I walked
down Lonely Street
towards Heartbreak Hotel.

- Elvis's Twin Sister ~ Carol Ann Duffy

I still read Donne, particularly his love poems. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

I Remember Me
There are not enough faces. Your own gapes back
at you on someone else, but paler, then the moment
when you see the next one and forget yourself.
It must be dreams that makes us different, must be
private cells inside a common skull.
One has the other's look and has another memory.
Despair stares out from tube-trains at itself
running on the platform for the closing door.
Everyone you meet is telling wordless barefaced truths.
Sometimes the crowd yields one you put a name to,
snapping fiction into fact. Mostly your lover passes in the rain and does not know you when you speak. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

I'll be left writing picture books and fairy tales. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

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

I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

It took ten years
In the woods to tell that a mushroom
Stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds
Are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf
Howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out
Season after season, same rhyme, same reason. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

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 ~ Carol Ann Duffy

Poets sing our human music for us. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head,
so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name,
like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables
like a charm, like a spell.

Falling in love
is glamorous hell; the crouched, parched heart
like a tiger ready to kill; a flame's fierce licks under the skin.
Into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in.

I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine,
in my camouflage rooms. You sprawled in my gaze,
staring back from anyone's face, from the shape of a cloud,
from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at me

as I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you are
on the bed, like a gift, like a touchable dream.

"You ~ Carol Ann Duffy

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. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

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

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

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. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

But life, they said, means life. Dying inside.
The Devil was evil, mad, but I was the Devil's wife
which made me worse. I howled in my cell.
If the Devil is gone then how could this be hell? ~ Carol Ann Duffy

Every day is a gift with a child, no matter what problems you have. ~ Carol Ann Duffy

It is not so important to have all the answers as to be hungry for them. ~ Carol Ann Tomlinson

Assessment is today's means of modifying tomorrow's instruction. ~ Carol Ann Tomlinson

Teachers craft classrooms that are good matches for their teaching styles as well as for learner needs. ~ Carol Ann Tomlinson

Readiness is a student's entry point relative to a particular understanding or skill. ~ Carol Ann Tomlinson

Interest refers to student's affinity, curiosity, or passion for a particular topic or skill. ~ Carol Ann Tomlinson

Differentiation is classroom practice that looks eyeball to eyeball with the reality that kids differ, and the most effective teachers do whatever it takes to hook the whole range of kids on learning. ~ Carol Ann Tomlinson

Sisters and brothers are the truest, purest forms of love, family and friendship, knowing when to hold you and when to challenge you, but always being a part of you. ~ Carol Ann Albright-Eastman

Sandwich Spanish will have you speaking and understanding Spanish with ease, using native-like pronunciation, and demonstrating culturally appropriate behaviors. You will be ready to take that vacation or live and thrive among the world's Spanish speaking societies! ~ Carol Ann George PhD

Differentiation is simply a teacher attending to the learning needs of a particular student or small groups of students, rather than teaching a class as though all individuals in it were basically alike. ~ Carol Ann Tomlinson

Think of your energy requirements as a bank account. You make deposits when you consume calories. You make withdrawals when your body spends energy on work. Nutritionists divide the amount of energy you withdraw each day into two parts: The energy you need when your body is at rest The energy you need to do your daily "work" To keep your energy account in balance, you need to take in enough each day to cover your withdrawals. As a general rule, infants and adolescents burn more energy per pound than adults do, because they're continually making large amounts of new tissue. Similarly, an average man burns more energy than an average woman because his body is larger and has more muscle (see the upcoming section "Sex, ~ Carol Ann Rinzler

Plan to be better today, but don't ever plan to be finished ~ Carol Ann Tomlinson

Jeremy Spencer, always religious to an obsessive degree, had disappeared hours before a show while on tour with Fleetwood Mac in the U.S. According to band lore, it had happened right here in Los Angeles in 1971. He walked out of the band's hotel room announcing, "Just going out to a bookstore", and never returned. Somewhere on Hollywood Boulevard he climbed into a van belonging to members of a religious group who called themselves the Children of God. After a long, frantic search involving the police and close friends, Jeremy was finally tracked down to a ramshackle house that was the headquarters of the Children of God. He'd become a full-fledged member of a religious group that some would label a cult. And there he stayed. He refused to come back to either Fleetwood Mac or his wife and children, choosing instead to join a group of religious fanatics and leave all that he had ever known behind. And now he was standing in ~ Carol Ann Harris

A gifted teacher has an unfailing eye for magical classrooms & loses sleep over anything less than the highest quality. ~ Carol Ann Tomlinson

When challenge and skills are in balance the activity is its own reward ~ Carol Ann Tomlinson

When you feel your child truly loves you back, it makes you wish you had kissed your parents more. ~ Carol Ann Susi

The central job of schools is to maximize the capacity of each students. ~ Carol Ann Tomlinson

Rafael possessed unfathomable strength. His speed defied the laws of nature...and his bite, good God, his bite. How could something so macabre feel so pleasurable? ~ Brooklyn Ann

The story of my marriage, which is the great joy and astonishment of my life, is too much like a fairy tale, the German kind, unsweetened by Disney. ~ Ann Patchett

He sat her on the edge of the bed then stood in front of her. When he stripped off his shirt, her jaw dropped.

Dear. God.

Ropes of corded muscles, hard lines of strength, sex, and everything in between covered his body. He had some chest hair, enough to enhance the beauty of his ink, but not too much.

And, sweet baby Jesus, his ink. ~ Carrie Ann Ryan

I do not suppose you have anything less potent?" "Certainly," he said. "I have the finest champagne, imported from France." "No doubt smuggled," Miss Hobson muttered. "Quite so," Vincent said agreeably. "This is Cornwall, after all. ~ Brooklyn Ann

Poor Mary Ann! She gave the guy an inch and now he thinks he's a ruler. ~ Mae West

It seems to make little sense how a person's self-worth or self-confidence should be wrapped up in how much their jacket is worth or what shoe they are wearing. Does a person's round or pointy-tip shoe really say anything of value about who a person is?
It seems that true luxury lies in a freedom from needing that red-bottom shoe, that handbag with all the tiny initials and big price tag, or the latest trend to know that a person truly matters. True luxury seems to lie in the separation of confidence and materialism.
Authentic luxury flourishes from the untying of self-worth from popular opinion. ~ Ann Brasco

Whenever a liberal begins a statement with 'I don't know which is more frightening', you know the answer is going to be pretty clear. ~ Ann Coulter

You try to be a nice guy, but girls just have to be stubborn about it. Then they complain chivalry is dead. Screw that. ~ Becca Ann

Just remember to keep an open mind. He really is quite sweet and won't bite. Well only occasionally. And only if you want him to. ~ Carrie Ann Ryan

Posture and Social Status...
During the 18th century in European and American society, aspects including station in life, status and dress could easily identify those of financial means. In fact, the garments of this era would hold the wearer in a position that would support and require proper posture. Women, and sometimes men, wore stays in order to shape the torso. Among the more privileged, even children wore stays since people believed these improved their posture and enhanced straight spinal growth. Certain movements were constrained by the cut and design of many garments, including details of the sleeve and back that would hold the person in proper posture. ~ Cindy Ann Peterson

It's enough. If I can have his friendship, it'll be enough. ~ Julie Ann Walker

Then I imagine this is how other people feel when they find my pink Post-it. But this one is bright blue and it's written in black Sharpie. It says, You are the silver lining. I love that phrase and the fact that it came from John Milton. "Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud / Turn forth her silver lining on the night?" So somebody out there thinks I'm the bright side of a dark cloud. ~ Ann Aguirre

I have no guarantee that God will choose to heal Ann, but I know he wants me to pray to that end. ~ K. Howard Joslin

Teddy Kennedy's big new idea is to wheel out his 18th proposal to raise the minimum wage. He's been doing this since wages were paid in Spanish doubloons (which coincidentally are now mostly found underwater). Kennedy refuses to countenance any risky schemes like trying to grow the economy so people making minimum wage get raises because they've been promoted. Kennedy's going down and he's taking the party with him! (Recognize the pattern?) ~ Ann Coulter

When people warn me about someone - the label head or the publishing head - that somebody is difficult, I'm in heaven. ~ Carol Friedman

Wear them, they will make you brave. ~ Ann Brashares

Maybe all I wanted was for Toby to hear the wolves that lived in the dark forest of my heart. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

Irrelevant' Chris Fogle turns a page. Howard Cardwell turns a page. Ken Wax turns a page. Matt Redgate turns a page. 'Groovy' Bruce Channing attaches a form to a file. Ann Williams turns a page. Anand Singh turns two pages at once by mistake and turns one back which makes a slightly different sound. David Cusk turns a page. Sandra Pounder turns a page. Robert Atkins turns two separate pages of two separate files at the same time. Ken Wax turns a page. Lane Dean Jr. turns a page. Olive Borden turns a page. Chris Acquistipace turns a page. David Cusk turns a page. Rosellen Brown turns a page. Matt Redgate turns a page. R. Jarvis Brown turns a page. Ann Williams sniffs slightly and turns a page. Meredith Rand does something to a cuticle. 'Irrelevant' Chris Fogle turns a page. Ken Wax turns a page. Howard Cardwell turns a page. Kenneth 'Type of Thing' Hindle detaches a Memo 402-C(1) from a file. 'Second-Knuckle' Bob McKenzie looks up briefly while turning a page. David Cusk turns a page. A yawn proceeds across one Chalk's row by unconscious influence. Ryne Hobratschk turns a page. Latrice Theakston turns a page. Rotes Group Room 2 hushed and brightly lit, half a football field in length. Howard Cardwell shifts slightly in his chair and turns a page. Lane Dean Jr. traces his jaw's outline with his ring finger. Ed Shackleford turns a page. Elpidia Carter turns a page. Ken Wax attaches a Memo 20 to a file. Anand Singh turns a page. Jay Landauer and Ann Williams turn a page almost pr ~ David Foster Wallace

I am Itzapoca. Long ago the Mayans worshiped me as a god. Today I am forgotten, a stone head half-buried in the jungle. Yet I have endured for ages, far longer than any puny modern structure built from steel and concrete. Long before the era of hydraulic cranes, my followers lifted me to the top of this lush green slope where I sit looking down on the shining blue waters of the bay. ~ Carol Storm

It was funny how the old practices always came around again. It was the rhythm of human enterprise to invent and worship some new approach, to fully reject it a generation later, to realize the need for it again a generation or two after that and then hastily reinvent it as new, usually without its original elegance. Scientists hated to look backward for anything. ~ Ann Brashares

And so he suspected the mayor of easing the budget crunch for sheltering the poor by giving them one-way bus tickets to warmer climates. And that was cold. ~ Carol O'Connell

Te amo, Querida," he whispered, stroking her hair. "Tu eres mi luz en la oscuridad." I love you. You are my light in the darkness. ~ Brooklyn Ann

I have beliefs, of course, like everyone-but I don't always believe in them. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

What are the consequences of thinking that your intelligence or personality is something you can develop, as opposed to something that is a fixed, deep-seated trait? ~ Carol S. Dweck

It's not about having things figured out, or about communicating with other people, trying to make them understand what you understand. It's about a chicken dinner at a drive-in. A soft pillow. Things that don't need explaining. ~ Ann Beattie

They think of themselves as your grandparents,' he said. But call them whatever you like. James and Mary? ~ Ann Cleeves