5 Quotes by Fleur Adcock

There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public.There are worse things than these miniature betrayals,committed or endured or suspected; there are worse thingsthan not being able to sleep for thinking about them.It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking inand stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and worse.

I write in praise of the solitary act: of not feeling a trespassing tongue forced into one’s mouth, one’s breath smothered, nipples crushed against the ribcage, and that metallic tingling in the chin set off by a certain odd nerve: unpleasure.

Art’s whatever you choose to frame.

Poetry is a search for ways of communication; it must be conducted with openness, flexibility, and a constant readiness to listen.

Somehow we manage it: to like our friends, to tolerate not only their little ways but their huge neuroses, their monumental oddness: “Oh well,” we smile, “it’s one of his funny days.”