It was a world that I wanted to record because it was such a miracle visitation to me. - Laurie Lee

I have tried to be faithful to delight... - Ruth Pitter

And some are sparkling, laughing, singing,/Young, heroic, mild;/And some incurable, twisted,/Shrieking, dumb, defiled. - 'Can You Remember?, Edmund Blunden

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

I'd like to think...that people in pubs would talk about my poems. - Larkin to his publisher

Poetry is the voice of spirit and imagination and all that is potential, as well as of the healing benevolence that used to be the privilege of the gods. - Ted Hughes

Come close the flower says and we come close, / close enough to lift, cup and smell the rose - 'Come Close', Mimi Khalvati

A keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders - Seamus Heaney

And here is love / like a tinsmith's scoop / sunk past its gleam / in the meal-bin - 'Mossbawn Sunlight', Seamus Heaney

I do mock literature and take it seriously at the same time, but anyone who is passionately attached to a football team will have similar mixed feelings - Ian Duhig

What happens with me is quite often I start with a memory, mix it with observations of people I know and then mix in a bit of 'What if...?' - Michael Rosen

All poems are rash acts. - Allen Curnow