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There'll be what you might call a moment of inspiration – a way of seeing or feeling or remembering, an instance or a person that's made a large impression. Like the sand and the oyster, it's a creative irritant. In each poem, I'm trying to reveal a truth, so it can't have a fictional beginning

— Carol Ann Duffy

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Inspirational

More quotes by Carol Ann Duffy

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.

What do I have
to help me, without spell or prayer,
endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous,
the death of love?

All I know is this:
he went out for his walk a man
and came home female.

When you have a child, your previous life seems like someone else's. It's like living in a house and suddenly finding a room you didn't know was there, full of treasure and light.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

All Carol Ann Duffy quotes →

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I'll get an inspiration and start painting; then I'll forget everything, everything except how things used to be and how to paint it so people will know how we used to live.

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I’m tired of ignorance held up as inspiration, where vicious anti-intellectualism is considered a positive trait, and where uninformed opinion is displayed as fact.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Carol Ann Duffy (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.