Andrew Motion quotes - page 2

In the swirl of its pool the home-coming salmon has no intuition of anything changed. (Andrew Motion)
More people are reading poetry now than at any time in the history of the human race. View quote
Andrew Motion
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. View quote
Andrew Motion
There are plenty of examples of people who have had busy lives out there in the world, trying to do good, and written very well at the same time. View quote
Andrew Motion
If I were to die thinking that I'd written three poems that people might read after me, I would feel that I hadn't lived in vain. Great poets might expect the whole body of their work, but most of us - well, I would settle for a handful. View quote
Andrew Motion
In a general way, I want to be a kind of flag-waver, bunting hanger-up, drum-beater, you name it, for poetry. View quote
Andrew Motion
I've found a different way to scent the air: already it's a by-word for despair. View quote
Andrew Motion
I wish I'd been better able to resist the sense of obligation to write some of the poems I did. It's in the nature of commissioned work to be written too much from the side of your mind that knows what it's doing, which dries up the poetry. View quote
Andrew Motion
I'm also a great believer in the dream life; that while we're asleep, a deep subconscious connection is made about our profoundest fears, hopes, loves, losses, dreads and desires. View quote
Andrew Motion
When you're being looked at very hard, it's very hard to look back. And that made me stop paying attention to the world in a way that allowed me then to write about it. View quote
Andrew Motion
Thanks partly to the kind of poets that we now have and partly to funding, there's been a gigantic shift in the way poetry is perceived... Poems on the Underground, poets in schools, football clubs, zoos. (Andrew Motion)
The best public poems aren't necessarily those that go at the subject like a bull at a gate. View quote
Andrew Motion
While also, importantly, not wanting to dumb it down or pretend the days of 'difficult' poetry are over, because we live in a pluralist culture and there's room for 'difficult' poetry alongside rap and everything else. And poetry won't be for everyone, but everyone should have the choice. View quote
Andrew Motion
Poets know their own poems in a way and to a depth that is unique.. even if they mumble a bit ..their delivery will still have important things to tell us. View quote
Andrew Motion