"The progress of any writer is marked by those moments when he manages to outwit his own inner police system."
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Quote collection
Ted Hughes quotes (page 2 of 3)
55 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"You could become internationally famous - you're Gemini, and according to antique authority have a literary talent, which of course your letters prove."
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"The inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded case, the voice of pain – and the physical body, so to speak, of poetry, is the treatment by which the poet tries to reconcile that pain with the world."
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"Stilled legendary depth: It was as deep as England. It held Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old That past nightfall I dared not cast."
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"This house has been far out at sea all night, The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills, Winds stampeding the fields under the window Floundering black astride and blinding wet Till day rose; then under an orange sky The hills had new places, and wind wielded Blade-light, luminous black and emerald, Flexing like the lens of a mad eye."
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"There is no better way to know us Than as two wolves, come separately to a wood."
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"It took the whole of Creation to produce my foot, my each feather: now I hold Creation in my foot."
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"I think it was Milosz, the Polish poet, who when he lay in a doorway and watched the bullets lifting the cobbles out of the street beside him realised that most poetry is not equipped for life in a world where people actually die. But some is."
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"Where white is black and black is white, I won."
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"Do as you like with me. I'm your parcel. I have only our address on me. Open me, or readdress me."
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"And the elephant sings deep in the forest-maze About a star of deathless and painless peace But no astronomer can find where it is."
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"With a sudden sharp hot stink of fox, It enters the dark hole of the head. The window is starless still; the clock ticks, The page is printed."
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"You solve it as you get older, when you reach the point where you've tasted so much that you can somehow sacrifice certain things more easily, and you have a more tolerant view of things like possessiveness (your own) and a broader acceptance of the pains and the losses."
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"The Bush administration doesn't particularly like public participation. It makes them look bad."
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"The wolf is living for the earth."
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"But who is stronger than death? Me , evidently ."
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"What happens in the heart simply happens."
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"He could not stand. It was not That he could not thrive, he was born With everything but the will – That can be deformed, just like a limb. Death was more interesting to him. Life could not get his attention."
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"What happened casually remains -"
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"And as if reporting some felony to the police they let you know you were not John Donne."
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