This misfortune you find is of your own manufacture. Keep hold of what you have, it will harm no other, for hatred comes home to the hand that chose it.

The ordinary can be absolutely miraculous.

You’re beautiful because when you were born, undiscovered planets lined up to peep over the rim of your cradle and lay gifts of gravity and light at your miniature feet

If you were going to choose a way of making your way in this world and a place to start from, you might not choose poetry and you might not choose Huddersfield.

We still need a voice that thinks before it speaks.

People who read poetry, for example, like the feel, the heft and the smell of a book.

In all the poems I've written I've not really engaged in politics, and when I've found myself moving in that direction I've always stopped myself.

And wonder, dread and war have lingered in that land where loss and love in turn have held the upper hand.

The Huddersfield that I like best is a large town with a big heart and an open mind.

I wondered if people might not have had enough of Simon Armitage and wondered whether I hadn't had enough of Simon Armitage.

This misfortune you find is of your own manufacture.

Bitter and Frail, young and weak. Smiles are useless, talk is cheap, Give thou venom, fangs like slime, Ugly freak for all of time. An empty gift just from me, Give it now, so mote it be!

From without no wonderful effect is wrought within ourselves unless some interior responding wonder meets it.

Love, having no geography, knows no boundaries.

Men with purple hearts carry silver guns and they will kill a man for what his father has done. But what my father did, I don't live it: no, I am not him.

To be right is more honorable than to be law abiding.

Working in television, many times you read a script, you work on the pilot, and then you play the waiting game to see if you're able to make it a series.

I don't consult polls to tell me what my principles are or what our policies should be.

I say not one penny more to countries that are burning our flag.

But there are some persons who wouldpersuade the people never to make use of their constitutional rights.

For a quart of ale is a dish for a king.