I am always pleased to be asked to write a poem.

- Carol Ann Duffy

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

- Carol Ann Duffy

I'll be left writing picture books and fairy tales.

- Carol Ann Duffy

Edinburgh is my favourite city. We'll be doing a lot of children's theatre and galleries.

- Carol Ann Duffy

If I felt, in the event of a royal wedding, inspired to write about people coming together in marriage or civil partnership, I would just be grateful to have an idea for the poem. And if I didn't, I'd ignore it.

- Carol Ann Duffy

The poem is the literary form of the 21st century. It's able to connect young people in a deep way to language... it's language as play.

- Carol Ann Duffy

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

- Carol Ann Duffy

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.

- Carol Ann Duffy

Having a child takes you back to all those parts of your own childhood that you had hidden away.

- Carol Ann Duffy

Every day is a gift with a child, no matter what problems you have.

- Carol Ann Duffy

Between 9am and 3pm is when I work most intensely.

- Carol Ann Duffy

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

- Carol Ann Duffy

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

- Carol Ann Duffy

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

- Carol Ann Duffy

I always say that I'll have a go and see whether the poem works and if it does, then fine.

- Carol Ann Duffy

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.

- Carol Ann Duffy

I grew up in a bookless house - my parents didn't read poetry, so if I hadn't had the chance to experience it at school I'd never have experienced it. But I loved English, and I was very lucky in that I had inspirational English teachers, Miss Scriven and Mr. Walker, and they liked us to learn poems by heart, which I found I loved doing.

- Carol Ann Duffy

If we think of what's up ahead, with climate change and wars over water, it's very frightening.

- Carol Ann Duffy

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

- Carol Ann Duffy

I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom, on the stairs, everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it.

- Carol Ann Duffy