107 Quotes by Ted Hughes

We stirOur self-colour in the pot of coloursWhich is the world.

So this was the reverse of dazzling Nauset.The flip of the coin - the flip of an ocean fallenDream-face down. And here, at my feet, in the suds,The other face, the real, staring upwards.

The rag rugThat had heaped out onto your lapSlid to the floor. There it lay, coiledBetween us. However it came,And wherever it found its tongue, its fang, its meaning,It survived our Eden.

They only want to weepAs after the huge warsSenseless huge warsHuge senseless weeping.

How could Fate stage a scenario so symbolic without having secreted the tragedy ending and the ironic death?

The lawn lay like the pristine waiting page Of a prison report. Who would write what upon it I never gave a thought. A dumb creature, looping at the furnace door On its demon’s prong, Was a pen already writing Wrong is right, right wrong.

In the beginning was ScreamWho begat BloodWho begat EyeWho begat FearWho begat WingWho begat BoneWho begat GraniteWho begat VioletWho begat GuitarWho begat SweatWho begat AdamWho begat MaryWho begat GodWho begat NothingWho begat NeverNever Never NeverWho begat CrowScreaming for BloodGrubs, crustsAnythingTrembling featherless elbows in the nest's filth

That's the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they're suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That's why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember. But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells—he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster.

And as abruptlyShe had gone on, hither, thither,Among the tables and vanished, leaving her wordsHeavier than the Cathedral,Bigger, darker, founded far deeper -My whole body taking their weightLike a newer or much older religionIn me alone, to be carriedEverywhere with me - deeper catacombs.And with a stronger God.