Explore Quotes by Carol Ann Duffy

Every day is a gift with a child, no matter what problems you have.

I still read Donne, particularly his love poems

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

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

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.

How would you prepare to die on a perfect April evening?

Between 9am and 3pm is when I work most intensely

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

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

I always say that I'll have a go and see whether the poem works and if it does, then fine.

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.

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

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.

Time hates love, wants love poor,/but love spins gold, gold, gold from straw.

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

Better off dead than giving in; not taking what you want.

I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way.

What will you do now with the gift of your left life?

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

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.

The stars are filming us for no one.