Duffy Quotes

My only feeling about superstition is that it's unlucky to be behind at the end of the game.

The difference between good and great is just a little extra effort.

I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way.

I did as much research as I could and I took ownership of this illness, because if you don't take care of your body, where are you going to live?

We all have to rise in the end, not just one or two who were smart enough, had will enough for their own salvation, but all the halt, the maimed and the blind of us which is most of us.

The pain of love is the pain of being alive. It is a perpetual wound.

Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings.

For me, poetry is the music of being human. And also a time machine by which we can travel to who we are and to who we will become.

Concealing an illness is like keeping a beach ball under water.

You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what's in your heart.

I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite.

Poetry, above all is a series of intense moments ­ its power is not in narrative. I'm not dealing with facts, I'm dealing with emotion.

Football isn't a contact sport, it's a collision sport.

There is no such thing as a weekend for me when I'm at home on my ranch in Oregon.

It's been an incredible odyssey to make the journey from a vibrantly healthy person to someone with a chronic illness.

Not only is he ambidextrous, but he can throw with either hand.

A tie is like kissing your sister.

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.

Poetry and prayer are very similar.

I could have been a Rhodes Scholar, except for my grades.

Christmas is taken very seriously in this household. I believe in Father Christmas and there's no way I'd do anything to undermine that belief.

When you have a child, your previous life seems like someone else's. It's like living in a house and suddenly finding a room you didn't know was there, full of treasure and light.

Like the sand and the oyster, it's a creative irritant. In each poem, I'm trying to reveal a truth, so it can't have a fictional beginning.

Football is not a contact sport. Its a collision sport

All those football coaches who hold dressing-room prayers before a game should be forced to attend church once a week.

Love is the only effective counter to death.

What will you do now with the gift of your left life?

All reduction of people to objects, all imposition of labels and patterns to which they must conform, all segregation can lead only to destruction.

It's always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated, unlike poetry, which is more equal

I like to think that I'm a sort of poet for our times.

She stood upon a continent of ice, which sparkled between sea and sky, endless and dazzling, as though the world kept all its treasure there; a scale which balanced poetry and prayer.

I think all poets must feel this: that there is constantly something new to be discovered in the language. It's like a thrilling encounter, and you can find things.

My prose is turgid, it just hasn't got any energy

I see the shape of the poem before I start writing, and the writing is just the process of arriving at the shape.

I think poetry can help children deal with the other subjects on the curriculum by enabling them to see a subject in a new way.

The truly great person is the one who gives you a chance.

When you're are playing for the national championship, it's not a matter of life or death. Its more important than that.

I think the dangers are different now. Our abuse of the planet and our resources is an anxiety.

Happiness is the best cosmetic.

I don't have feeling in my feet to my fingertips; I also have active lesions in my bone marrow and in my eyes.

Poets sing our human music for us.

My family has been amazing, and they understand how blessed I am. They've been able to keep my sense of humor.

A lot of people asked me if it was frustrating not having a clear specific diagnosis, but I didn't mind, I just chose the most optimistic diagnosis.

I had a lump on my face and had a big cancer thing removed.

I still read Donne, particularly his love poems

I always wanted a child. Being a mother is the central thing in my life.

I'll be left writing picture books and fairy tales

Symbolic rearrangement of the past is of course an unavoidable aspect of all human attempts to make sense of the present.

I can hold a note and I know I'm not ugly so, in ways, that's enough.

In a way, I have simplified my life by setting priorities.