Ted Hughes Quotes
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He swayed in the strong wind that pressed against his back. He swayed forward, on the brink of the high cliff. And his right foot, his enormous iron right foot, lifted-up, out, into space, and the Iron Man stepped forward, off the cliff, into nothingness.
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It took the whole of Creation To produce my foot, my each feather: Now I hold Creation in my foot.
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Fishing provides that connection with the whole living world. It gives you the opportunity of being totally immersed, turning back into yourself in a good way. A form of meditation, some form of communion with levels of yourself that are deeper than the ordinary self.
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What happens in the heart simply happens.
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Cold, delicately as the dark snow,A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;Two eyes serve a movement, that nowAnd again now, and now, and nowSets neat prints into the snow.
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But who is stronger than death?Me, evidently.
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Stilled legendary depth:It was as deep as England. It heldPike too immense to stir, so immense and oldThat past nightfall I dared not cast.
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The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.Over the cage floor the horizons come.
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I think it’s the shock of every writer’s life when their first book is published. The shock of their lives. One has somehow to adjust from being anonymous, a figure in ambush, working from concealment, to being and working in full public view. It had an enormous effect on me. My impression was that I had suddenly walked into a wall of heavy hostile fire.
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Who owns the whole rainy, stony earth? Death.Who owns all of space? Death.
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The Bush administration doesn't particularly like public participation. It makes them look bad.
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No, the serpent did notSeduce Eve to the apple.All that's simplyCorruption of the facts.Adam ate the apple.Eve ate Adam.The serpent ate Eve.This is the dark intestine.The serpent, meanwhile,Sleeps his meal off in Paradise-Smiling to hearGod's querulous calling.
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The jaws' hooked clamp and fangsNot to be changed at this date;A life subdued to its instrument.
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This house has been far out at sea all night, The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills, Winds stampeding the fields under the window Floundering black astride and blinding wet Till day rose; then under an orange sky The hills had new places, and wind wielded Blade-light, luminous black and emerald, Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.
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Pike, three inches long, perfectPike in all parts, green tigering the gold.Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.
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Why do human beings need to confess? Maybe if you don’t have that secret confession, you don’t have a poem - don’t even have a story. Don’t have a writer. If most poetry doesn’t seem to be in any sense confessional, it’s because the strategy of concealment, of obliquity, can be so compulsive that it’s almost entirely successful.
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I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.Inaction, no falsifying dreamBetween my hooked head and hooked feet:Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.
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The brassy wood-pigeonsBubble their colourful voices, and the sunRises upon a world well-tried and old.
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The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff. How far had he walked? Nobody knows. Where did he come from? Nobody knows. How was he made? Nobody knows. Taller than a house the Iron Man stood at the top of the cliff, at the very brink, in the darkness.
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Nothing has changed since I began.My eye has permitted no change.I am going to keep things like this.
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The deeps are cold:In that darkness camaraderie does not hold:Nothing touches but, clutching, devours.
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Nobody knew the Iron Man had fallen. Night passed.
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With a sudden sharp hot stink of fox,It enters the dark hole of the head.The window is starless still; the clock ticks,The page is printed.
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Poems get to the point where they are stronger than you are. They come up from some other depth and they find a place on the page. You can never find that depth again, that same kind of authority and voice. I might feel I would like to change something about them, but they’re still stronger than I am and I cannot.