-
10
I've found a different way to scent the air: already it's a by-word for despair.
-
9
Each sudden gust of light explains itself as flames, but neither they, nor even bombs redoubled on the hills tonight can quite include me in their fear.
-
8
But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and do, do both.
-
7
I am writing more than I have ever done. My life has come back to me in the most extraordinary way.
-
6
I deeply adored my mum. She was an extraordinary person, even for the prejudice I'm likely to have. She was beautiful, amusing, a tremendous elaborator of things into comic proportions and extravagant in her imagination.
-
5
I like eating out. I like buying beautiful paintings and being surrounded by beautiful things. I have to finance that life. I can barely afford a pension scheme because I don't make enough money.
-
4
I read ' Treasure Island' for the first time at university. And I started to notice then how unresolved some things were. Later, I realised that Stevenson was interested in sequels, and I wondered whether he would have gone back to it had he lived longer.
-
3
But Wordsworth is the poet I admire above all others.
-
2
Poems are a hotline to our hearts, and we forget this emotional power at our peril
-
1
I don't want my poems to be sentimental, though I do acknowledge that sentiment is probably rather under-reported in a lot of people's feelings a lot of the time.
Last Update: 8 March 2021
View the rest 22 Andrew Motion sayings