Obviously one of the things that poets from Northern Ireland and beyond - had to try to make sense of was what was happening on a day-to-day political level.

Words want to find chimes with each other, things want to connect.

I certainly am interested in accessibility, clarity, and immediacy.

The ground swell is what’s going to sink you as well as being what buoys you up. These are clichés also, of course, and I’m sometimes interested in how much one can get away with.

One will never again look at a birch tree, after the Robert Frost poem, in exactly the same way.

Form is a straitjacket in the way that a straitjacket was a straitjacket for Houdini.

The point of poetry is to be acutely discomforting, to prod and provoke, to poke us in the eye, to punch us in the nose, to knock us off our feet, to take our breath away.

Confusion is what we're living with - not being able to make sense of what's happening to us from day to day. Whereas making sense is what we're aiming for - making sense.

That's one of the great things about poetry; one realises that one does one's little turn - that you're just part of the great crop, as it were.

I believe that these devices like repetition and rhyme are not artificial, that they're not imposed, somehow, on the language.

I suppose for whatever reason I actively welcome being put down, something which perhaps goes back to my upbringing - that accusation of not being worthy which could be laid at one's door.

We are what we build

I don't mean to sound - I don't want it to come out funny, but I don't like show business. I love - I love acting in films. I love it.

I really just appreciate good jewelry, clarity, gold. I think gold is made for kings and pharaohs - that's what I am. That's why I rock gold and, you know, stuff like that.

We don't want to tell our dreams. We want to show them

As I've gotten older, my mannerisms are more and more like my mom's. Also, she was an educator - she's extremely passionate about education and children. I guess I inherited that in some way.

I think that we should all be defined by our work and our results.

It’s time for women to stop being politely angry.

I grew up on the tennis court with lots of other kids. There were like 40 kids all afternoon and I was one of the youngest ones, so I always had to chase everybody to keep up.

I'm no different to anyone else; I want people to like me. I just don't particularly want them to understand me.