Ted Hughes Quotes

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

The sea cries with its meaningless voice, Treating alike its dead and its living

I shall also take you forth and carve our names together in a yew tree, haloed with stars.

Prose, narratives, etcetera, can carry healing. Poetry does it more intensely.

The real mystery is this strange need. Why can't we just hide it and shut up? Why do we have to blab? Why do human beings need to confess?

You are who you choose to be.

where are the gods the gods hate us the gods have run away the gods have hidden in holes the gods are dead of the plague they rot and stink too there never were any gods there’s only death

The dreamer in her Had fallen in love with me and she did not know it. That moment the dreamer in me Fell in love with her and I knew it

The world's decay where the wind's hands have passed, And my head, worn out with love, at rest In my hands, and my hands full of dust.

The deeps are cold: In that darkness camaraderie does not hold: Nothing touches but, clutching, devours.

Show him every dawn & read to him endlessly.

The brassy wood-pigeons Bubble their colourful voices, and the sun Rises upon a world well-tried and old.

He was his own leftover, the spat-out scrag. He was what his brain could make nothing of.

The progress of any writer is marked by those moments when he manages to outwit his own inner police system.

You could become internationally famous - you're Gemini, and according to antique authority have a literary talent, which of course your letters prove.

Stilled legendary depth: It was as deep as England. It held Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old That past nightfall I dared not cast.

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

It took the whole of Creation to produce my foot, my each feather: now I hold Creation in my foot.

Do as you like with me. I'm your parcel. I have only our address on me. Open me, or readdress me.

Where white is black and black is white, I won.

With a sudden sharp hot stink of fox, It enters the dark hole of the head. The window is starless still; the clock ticks, The page is printed.

And the elephant sings deep in the forest-maze About a star of deathless and painless peace But no astronomer can find where it is.

The Bush administration doesn't particularly like public participation. It makes them look bad.

The wolf is living for the earth.

But who is stronger than death? Me , evidently .

What happens in the heart simply happens.

And as if reporting some felony to the police they let you know you were not John Donne.

What happened casually remains -

Nobody wanted your dance, Nobody wanted your strange glitter, your floundering Drowning life and your effort to save yourself, Treading water, dancing the dark turmoil, Looking for something to give.

The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel. Over the cage floor the horizons come.

The gash in its throat was shocking, but not pathetic.

Nothing has changed since I began. My eye has permitted no change. I am going to keep things like this.

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed. Inaction, no falsifying dream Between my hooked head and hooked feet: Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

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

Nobody knew the Iron Man had fallen. Night passed.

Applause is the beginning of abuse

So the self under the eye lies, Attendant and withdrawn.

The Shell The sea fills my ear with sand and with fear. You may wash out the sand, but never the sound of the ghost of the sea that is haunting me.

The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs Not to be changed at this date; A life subdued to its instrument.

In the pit of red You hid from the bone-clinic whiteness But the jewel you lost was blue.

Nobody wanted your dance, Nobody wanted your strange glitter, your flounderingDrowning life and your effort to save yourself, Treading water, dancing the dark turmoil, Looking for something to give.

But artists didn't need to achieve "firsts", and Hughes wanted to be an artist.

Even the most misfitting childWho's chanced upon the library's worth, Sits with the genius of the EarthAnd turns the key to the whole world.--"Hear It Again

In writing these poems about relatives, I found it almost impossible to write about the mother. I was stuck. My feelings about my mother, you see, must be too complicated to easily flow into words.

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

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

The only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldy enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.