All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. - A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

In the face of loss - human, natural, temporal - McQueen finds salvation in language. Often her work is about artistic endeavour itself: the desire to freeze time, the realisation that this is impossible - Sarah Quigley

A great work by an Englishman is like a great battle won by England. It is an unfading bay tree. Gerard Manley Hopkins

Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand. - Ezra Pound

The blood jet is poetry,/ There is no stopping it. - 'Kindness', Sylvia Plath (written 1st February 1963)

There is no gaudiness in her poetry; instead the reader is aware of a generosity of spirit which allows the poems' subjects their own unbullied reality. - The Listener

All poems are rash acts. - Allen Curnow