Andrew Motion

“I've always thought that the balance between the side of my mind that knows what it is doing and the side that really hasn't got a clue has to be carefully maintained because if you write too knowingly then you get chilly, and if you write too unknowingly you write bollocks that nobody else can understand.”

“I don't want my poems to be sentimental, though I do acknowledge that sentiment is probably rather under-reported in a lot of people's feelings a lot of the time.”

“Thanks partly to the kind of poets that we now have and partly to funding, there's been a gigantic shift in the way poetry is perceived... Poems on the Underground, poets in schools, football clubs, zoos.”

“Each sudden gust of light explains itself as flames, but neither they, nor even bombs redoubled on the hills tonight can quite include me in their fear.”

“While also, importantly, not wanting to dumb it down or pretend the days of 'difficult' poetry are over, because we live in a pluralist culture and there's room for 'difficult' poetry alongside rap and everything else. And poetry won't be for everyone, but everyone should have the choice.”

“Pretty much every weekend, my wife and I have the shall-we-live-in-the-country conversation. I suppose it's something to do with getting older and feeling I want to shed some of the things I've been doing for the last 20 years and go back to my roots.”

“But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and do, do both.”

“I've found a different way to scent the air: already it's a by-word for despair.”

“I like eating out. I like buying beautiful paintings and being surrounded by beautiful things. I have to finance that life. I can barely afford a pension scheme because I don't make enough money.”

“More people are reading poetry now than at any time in the history of the human race.”

“I shall try to write a poem that is about the moment but doesn't betray things that are true to me as a poet.”

“I wanted to reimagine the role, in a way that was respectful of its traditional responsibilities but made them part of a wider pattern of poetry about national incidents, events, preoccupations; and to spend a great deal of time going to schools trying to demystify poetry.”

“When Keats says: 'Axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses', what he means is that we don't necessarily believe what a poem is saying if it comes out and tells us in an absolutely head-on, in-your-face way; we only believe it to be true if we feel it to be true.”

“But Wordsworth is the poet I admire above all others.”

“Poems are a hotline to our hearts, and we forget this emotional power at our peril.”

“Well, it's a badge of honour for any self-respecting poet to be criticized by Auberon Waugh. But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and do, do both.”

“I am a vigilant monarchist. I want to see things evolve. The direction the monarchy seems to be moving in - towards a more mainland-European model - is one I would feel sympathetic about.”

“I'm also a great believer in the dream life; that while we're asleep, a deep subconscious connection is made about our profoundest fears, hopes, loves, losses, dreads and desires.”

“These places, and the ancient things you know, You won't know soon. I'm working on it now.'”

“Pretty much the day I stopped being laureate, the poems that had been few and far between came back to me, like birds in the evening nesting in a tree.”