Quotes from Andrew Motion

Those who say we should dismantle the role of Poet Laureate altogether, the trick they miss is that being called this thing, with the weight of tradition behind it, and with the association of the Royal family, does allow you to have conversations and to open doors, and wallets, for the good of poetry in a way that nothing else would allow.

I've found a different way to scent the air: already it's a by-word for despair.

I wanted to reimagine the role, in a way that was respectful of its traditional responsibilities but made them part of a wider pattern of poetry about national incidents, events, preoccupations; and to spend a great deal of time going to schools trying to demystify poetry.

Poems are a hotline to our hearts, and we forget this emotional power at our peril.

Nor can we see the coffin of a person we have known, without experiencing some new shock of loss. In this respect, a coffin is like a mirror, in which we see the image of our own condition, and understand that our human differences, whether of appearance, morality or wealth, must finally be reconciled.

American Psycho] is "throughout numbingly boring, and for much of the time deeply and extremely disgusting. Not interesting-disgusting, but disgusting-disgusting: sickening, cheaply sensationalist, pointless except as a way of earning its author some money and notoriety.

each of us describes our existence by means of objects which are indifferent to us, which survive us, and which are then thrown back into the common stock from which they are soon gathered again and ascribed other roles in other circumstances.

your pain brand new no matter how long it lasts which now means years...

I believe they taught me as much about the infinite capacity of things to be surprising—and a great deal about the power of beauty.

La tentazione della barbarie passa immutata da generazione a generazione, e riaffiorerà sempre ogni volta che ce ne sarà l'occasione adatta.

I am writing more than I have ever done. My life has come back to me in the most extraordinary way.

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.

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.

I write between 5.30am and 9.00. That way, I hope I carry over something from my dream time.

Like a lot of people, for a long time I thought that the road to hell is paved with bad sequels.

Poetry is at the centre of my life, too, emotionally speaking, and intellectually speaking - it's just that I'm one of those people who enjoy doing other stuff as well.

I'm ensuring my place in heaven.

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.

More people are reading poetry now than at any time in the history of the human race.

Keats writes better about poems than anybody I've ever read. The things that he says about what he wants his own poems to be are the ideals that I share.

Pretty much the day I stopped being laureate, the poems that had been few and far between came back to me, like birds in the evening nesting in a tree.

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.

I think it is interesting to think about the absolute animal relish young people have for rhythm and rhyme.

But I can't and don't ever want to write bell-yanking confetti-tossing hat-throwing poems.