Quotes by Ted Hughes

About Ted Hughes:

Edward James "Ted" Hughes was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.
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

Black was the without eye Black the within tongue Black was the heart Black the liver, black the lungs Unable to suck in light Black the blood in its loud tunnel Black the bowels packed in furnace Black too the muscles Striving to pull out into the l...

Ted Hughes

Nobody wanted your dance, Nobody wanted your strange glitter, your floundering Drowning life and your effort to save yourself, Treading water, dancing the dark turmoil, Looking for something to give.

Ted Hughes

If you're all so peaceful up there, how did you get such greedy and cruel ideas?" The dragon was silent for a long time after this question. And at last he said: "It just came over me. I don't know why. It just came over me, listening to the battling...

Ted Hughes

So we found the end of our journey. So we stood, alive in the river of light, Among the creatures of light, creatures of light.

Ted Hughes

You solve it as you get older, when you reach the point where you've tasted so much that you can somehow sacrifice certain things more easily, and you have a more tolerant view of things like possessiveness (your own) and a broader acceptance of the ...

Ted Hughes

The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough hear...

Ted Hughes

...imagine what you are writing about. See it and live it. Do not think it up laboriously, as if you were working out mental arithmetic. Just look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to it, turn yourself into it. When you do this, the words look after ...

Ted Hughes

I think it was Milosz, the Polish poet, who when he lay in a doorway and watched the bullets lifting the cobbles out of the street beside him realised that most poetry is not equipped for life in a world where people actually die. But some is.

Ted Hughes

What happens in the heart simply happens.

Ted Hughes

It took the whole of Creation To produce my foot, my each feather: Now I hold Creation in my foot.

Ted Hughes

The Bush administration doesn't particularly like public participation. It makes them look bad.

Ted Hughes

He could not stand. It was not That he could not thrive, he was born With everything but the will – That can be deformed, just like a limb. Death was more interesting to him. Life could not get his attention.

Ted Hughes

Every single person is vulnerable to unexpected defeat in this inmost emotional self. At every moment, behind the most efficient seeming adult exterior, the whole world of the person's childhood is being carefully held like a glass of water bulging a...

Ted Hughes

And that's how we measure out our real respect for people—by the degree of feeling they can register, the voltage of life they can carry and tolerate—and enjoy. End of sermon. As Buddha says: live like a mighty river. And as the old Greeks said: ...

Ted Hughes

The inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded case, the voice of pain – and the physical body, so to speak, of poetry, is the treatment by which the poet tries to reconcile that pain with the world.

Ted Hughes

There is no better way to know us Than as two wolves, come separately to a wood.

Ted Hughes

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...

Ted Hughes

What’s writing really about? It’s about trying to take fuller possession of the reality of your life.

Ted Hughes

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 ...

Ted Hughes

Author Bio

  • NameTed Hughes
  • DescriptionEnglish poet and children's writer
  • AliasesEdward James Hughes
  • BornAugust 17, 1930
  • DiedOctober 28, 1998
  • CountryEngland
  • ProfessionPoet; Writer; Novelist; Playwright
  • AwardsQueen's Gold Medal For Poetry