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

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

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

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