Alice Oswald Quotes
To be a poet is as serious, long-term and natural as the effort to be the best human you can be. To express something well is not a question of having a top-class education and understanding poetic forms: rather, it's a question of paying attention.

Quotes to Explore
-
My dad lived by example. I lived by watching him. I watched all the great things he did and said. I try to walk that talk for my children.
-
I think 'The Color of Money' was very instrumental in opening up other opportunities. People started to recognize me as an artist after that film. And then, after I did 'Bird,' it was more solidified.
-
I've failed those I care most about and let down the people who elected me to represent them.
-
I am not a prisoner of conscious, but people try to make me one sometimes. It is both a gift and a curse. It's a high honour but can create limitations - I have to be fluid.
-
During my second draft pass on my last book I made 20,000 words happen in a week, which is practically supernatural for me, and it would never have been possible without three nights in a hotel in my own city.
-
I feel like I'd have a different approach to football now after doing music.
-
You have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.
-
I owe it all to Jesus.
-
My dad was a designer for Upper Deck, and I had hundreds of Ken Griffey Jr. cards. Hundreds. I could have paid for college with them.
-
I find Los Angeles to be a place of great physical beauty, in which you have the oceans and the mountains, and there's a vertical sense and a desert light that you can see forever.
-
I kind of always took it for granted the fact that my parents were Olympic medalists.
-
If you live in New York or L.A., and you're liberal, and you're playing to a liberal crowd, it's almost like a rally... it's not edgy.
-
The first thing I do whenever I go to Thailand is seek out the closest restaurant or stall selling mango-and-sticky rice: it's a little hillock of glutinous rice drenched in lashings of coconut milk and served with fresh mango.
-
An individual ant, even though it has a brain about a millionth of a size of a human being's, can learn a maze; the kind we use is a simple rat maze in a laboratory. They can learn it about one-half as fast as a rat.
-
Music is like my security blanket.
-
We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race.
-
'Smart', in American usage, is slicker and sharper than 'intelligent'; faster off the mark and quicker on its feet than deep thought.
-
To come in and win three races already this year and maybe set a record by winning four is pretty unique. But guys like Mark Martin, Rusty Wallace and these guys are not wanting that to happen.
-
You cannot measure a man by his failures. You must know what use he makes of them. What did they mean to him. What did he get out of them.
-
Agathon: One must not try to trick misfortune, but resign oneself to it with good grace. (tr. Athen. 1912, vol. 2, p. 278) (tr. O'Neill 1938, Perseus)
-
What I'm doing in the work I do, I prefer not to just have a series of jokes. It's nice when audiences can connect with the characters as well.
-
I don't like being the center of attention.
-
I told Mother of my decision to study medicine. She encouraged me to speak to Father... I began in a roundabout way... He listened, looking at me with that serious and penetrating gaze of his that caused me such trepidation, and asked whether I knew what I wanted to do.
-
To be a poet is as serious, long-term and natural as the effort to be the best human you can be. To express something well is not a question of having a top-class education and understanding poetic forms: rather, it's a question of paying attention.