Actions Quotes Logo

Ted Hughes Quotes

In writing these poems about relatives, I found it almost impossible to write about the mother. I wa...

Show More
Poetry in the Making: An Anthology

Well, the terrible fact is that though we are all more or less thinking of something or other all th...

Show More
Poetry in the Making: An Anthology

If you were writing a book to be published, you might be restrained by the fear that your wild imagi...

Show More
Poetry in the Making: An Anthology

The difference between a fairly interesting writer and a fascinating writer is that the fascinating ...

Show More
Poetry in the Making: An Anthology

There is no correct way to write a novel, or rather, there is only one, and that one way is to make ...

Show More
Poetry in the Making: An Anthology

Imagine what you are writing about. See it and live it. Do not think it up laboriously, as if you we...

Show More
Poetry in the Making: An Anthology

It is not enough to say the crow flies purposefully, or heavily, or rowingly, or whatever. There are...

Show More
Poetry in the Making: An Anthology

So we found the end of our journey.So we stood, alive in the river of light,Among the creatures of l...

Show More

If you're all so peaceful up there, how did you get such greedy and cruel ideas?"The dragon was sile...

Show More
The Iron Man

I think it was Milosz, the Polish poet, who when he lay in a doorway and watched the bullets lifting...

Show More
Winter Pollen: Occasional Prose

What’s writing really about? It’s about trying to take fuller possession of the reality of your life...

Show More

Every single person is vulnerable to unexpected defeat in this inmost emotional self. At every momen...

Show More

Wadsworth MoorWhere the millstone of skyGrinds light and shadow so purple-fineAnd has ground it so l...

Show More

In those days I coercedOracular assuranceIn my favour out of every sign.

There is no better way to know us Than as two wolves, come separately to a wood.

That's the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they're suffering, when something o...

Show More

The inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded case, the voice of pain...

Show More

The only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldy enough, that they didn't invest enough h...

Show More

Right from the start he is dressed in his best - his blacks and his whitesLittle Fauntleroy - quiffe...

Show More

And that's how we measure out our real respect for people—by the degree of feeling they can register...

Show More

He could not stand. It was notThat he could not thrive, he was bornWith everything but the will –Tha...

Show More

Nobody wanted your dance,Nobody wanted your strange glitter, your flounderingDrowning life and your ...

Show More
Birthday Letters

I had let it all grow. I had supposed It was all OK. Your lifeWas a liner I voyaged in.Costly educat...

Show More

Even the most misfitting childWho's chanced upon the library's worth,Sits with the genius of the Ear...

Show More
Collected Poems

Black was the without eyeBlack the within tongueBlack was the heartBlack the liver, black the lungsU...

Show More
Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow

That’s the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they’re suffering, when something o...

Show More
Letters of Ted Hughes

T.S. Eliot said to me 'There’s only one way a poet can develop his actual writing – apart from self-...

Show More
Letters of Ted Hughes

Everybody tries to protect this vulnerable two three four five six seven eight year old inside, and ...

Show More
Letters of Ted Hughes

You solve it as you get older, when you reach the point where you've tasted so much that you can som...

Show More

The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears o...

Show More
Letters of Ted Hughes

The difficult thing is not to pick up the information but to recognise it - to accept it into our co...

Show More
Poetry in the Making: An Anthology

Keep your whole being on the thing you are turning into words. The minute you flinch, and take your ...

Show More

What I am going to propose is that you write a novel.As you know, the practical advantages of being ...

Show More
Poetry in the Making: An Anthology

There is the inner life, which is the world of final reality, the world of memory, emotion, imaginat...

Show More
Poetry in the Making: An Anthology

Related Authors

Picture of Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes

Poet

Born: 1930-08-17

Died: 1998-10-28

Edward James Hughes, OM (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998) was an English poet, translator and children's writer who for the last 14 years of his life occupied the role of Poet Laureate. He was the husband of Sylvia Plath, who influenced his writing style.More