Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Percy Bysshe Shelley, 'Ode to a Skylark'

Air falls under the heavy yoke of bells - 'Sunday Morning', Denis Glover

My goal is to combine the confessionalism of the Alvarez era with the modernist panache of the Forties poets I admire. Todd Swift

Trenches of night between us ... - 'War History', Sam Hunt

Silence is more musical than any song. Christina Rossetti

Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit / Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste / Brought death into the world, and all our woe. 'Paradise Lost'

A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket: let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I don't want to be one of those ivory tower writers; I want to affect people's lives.

She is all States, and all princes I, / Nothing else is. John Donne

Vain are the thousand creeds / That move men's hearts... Emily Bronte

"If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad." Lord Byron

Good words are worth much, and cost little.