Quotes by Helen Dunmore

About Helen Dunmore:

Helen Dunmore is a British poet, novelist and children's writer. Educated at the University of York, she now lives in Bristol. Dunmore is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL). Some of her children's books are now included in reading schemes for use in schools.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I have learned so much from working with other poets, travelling and reading with them, spending days discussing poems in progress. There is the sense that we are all, as writers, part of something which is more powerful than any of us.

Helen Dunmore

I enjoy research; in fact research is so engaging that it would be easy to go on for years, and never write the novel at all.

Helen Dunmore

I could start with Mandelstam, who was a huge influence on my early writing.

Helen Dunmore

I concentrate on the lives of individuals whom the reader comes to know and feel with intimately.

Helen Dunmore

I can remember being in my pram: children stayed in their prams much longer then than they do now. A big bouncy pram with black covers and a hood with metal clips that could trap your fingers. I was looking up at my sister who was sitting on the pram...

Helen Dunmore

However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned.

Helen Dunmore

Fiction came quite a while later. I began with short stories and fiction for children.

Helen Dunmore

A novel, in the end, is a container, a shape which you are trying to pour your story into.

Helen Dunmore

Listen to what you have written. A dud rhythm in a passage of dialogue may show that you don't yet understand the characters well enough to write in their voices." [ ( , 20 February 2010)]

Helen Dunmore

As individuals, we are shaped by story from the time of birth; we are formed by what we are told by our parents, our teachers, our intimates.

Helen Dunmore

Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear.

Helen Dunmore

The poets whom I knew then were all men and all seemed dauntingly sure of themselves - although I am sure that really they were as uncertain as I was.

Helen Dunmore

Author Bio

  • NameHelen Dunmore
  • DescriptionBritish novelist
  • BornDecember 12, 1952
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionPoet; Writer