91 Quotes by Carol Ann Duffy

Better off dead than giving in; not taking what you want.

What will you do now with the gift of your left life?

bees are the batteries of orchards, gardens, guard them.

I tend the mobile nowlike an injured birdWe text, text, textour significant words.I re-read your first,your second, your third,look for your small xx,feeling absurd.The codes we sendarrive with a broken chord.I try to picture your hands,their image is blurred.Nothing my thumbs presswill ever be heard."Text

When did your namechange from a proper nounto a charm?Its three vowelslike jewelson the thread of my breath.Its consonantsbrushing my mouthlike a kiss.I love your name.I say it again and againin this summer rain.I see it,discreet in the alphabet,like a wish.I pray itinto the nighttill its letters are light.I hear your namerhyming, rhyming,rhyming with everything."Name

I found the words at the back of a drawer,wrapped in black cloth, like three ringsslipped from a dead woman’s hand, cold,dull gold. I had held them before,years ago,then put them away, forgetting whatever it wasI could use them to say. I touched the first to my lips,like a pledge, like a kiss,and my breathwarmed them, the words I needed to utter this, small words,and few. I rubbed at them till they gleamed in my palm –I love you, I love you, I love you –as though they were new.

But life, they said, means life. Dying inside.The Devil was evil, mad, but I was the Devil's wifewhich made me worse. I howled in my cell.If the Devil is gone then how could this be hell?

We will tire each other out, making our homesin one another’s arms.

I stared in the mirror.Love gone badshowed me a Gorgon.I stared at a dragon.Fire spewedfrom the mouth of a mountain.And here you comewith a shield for a heartand a sword for a tongueand your girls, your girls.Wasn’t I beautifulWasn’t I fragrant and young?Look at me now.