'here I am, on the edge of animation, / a dream, a dance, a fantastic construction'. Moniza Alvi

Strands of autobiography, a deeply sensuous ecology of place, historical narratives; the inner world of imagination and the often difficult realities of the postcolonial nation are interwoven in McWatt's bold but carefully worked out architecture. Peepal Tree

My subject is War and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. Wilfred Owen

The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself. William Blake

I believe even 5-year-olds can get something from a Shakespearean sonnet...as long as you DON'T tell them, 'This is really hard.' - Rita Dove

Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead. - W. H. Auden

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. - Rudyard Kipling

Where is the spirit that touched the hearts / Lightly - chameleon colours of home? - 'Visiting Zomba Plateau', Jack Mapanje

I, too, sing America. - 'I, Too', Langston Hughes

I've always been concerned to get into [my poetry] the details of daily living which portray - or betray - human strengths and weaknesses and oddities. - Alan Brownjohn

As a new empire swells into the full glare of the global limelight, its novelists and balladeers could very well take a good lesson from Enright: Look long and hard. Write clearly. And keep it sharp. - James Norton, Flakmag