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All Quotes by author - Tony Harrison

" A lot of my activity in the theatre, and even in writing poems, was a kind of retrospective aggro on the English teacher who wouldn't allow me to read poetry aloud. "

" A poem, once it's written, is meant to be read with the inner voice of the person who reads it. "

" Coming from a very inarticulate family made me try to speak for those who can't express themselves and created a need for articulation at its most ceremonial - poetry. "

" For me, there is a paradox in poetry, which is like the paradox in tragedy. You have the most terrible subject, but it's in a form that is so sensually gratifying that it connects the surviving heart to the despairing intellect. "

" Honours seem to be the nature of British life. It's horrible. Maybe I'm mad, but the older I get, the less I want to have honours loaded on me. "

" I am capable of bad taste - deliberately. "

" I believe more in the power of drama than in the power of religion. "

" I'd rather climb Everest than go for a walk in the park. "

" I hate being called poet/dramatist/translator/director. 'Poet' covers it all for me. "

" I hate everything about writing except doing it. "

" I hate the anglicanisation of culture, the idea that culture is genteel. It's not genteel. "

" I have always loved radio as a medium. "

" I like a direct relationship between actor and audience. "

" I love being on the road with others, with a camera, but also being alone writing poetry. "

" I'm hoping to have a ninth decade like Matisse's. "

" I'm not the sort of person who reads much about himself. "

" I need to look back on my poetic ventures, make sense of them as a whole, and move forward... and to experiment without external demands. "

" I often find myself quoting from Victor Hugo after one of my theatrical ventures. 'Now that my play is a failure,' he once said, 'I find I love it all the more.' I first quoted that after 'Square Rounds' at the Olivier in 1992. "

" I really admire the great Japanese artists who could change their name three times in a lifetime. You could get rid of one and renew yourself. "

" I spent a lot of time on recce. It is a kind of creative chaos, but I like the sense of creative serendipity. "

" I think it's the tendency to want to create gods and monotheistic absolutes and absolute certainties that is the continual temptation in human thought - that's the great danger. Every time we create a god, we diminish humanity. "

" I think poems belong as much in the news pages as the literary pages. A lot of people throw aside the literary pages! Whereas everybody looks at the news section. "

" I think that, as you get older, you want to be freer rather than more bound. "

" It is always better to write for the whole of society than for the poetry-reading public. "

" It's been an obsession with me from childhood, the horrors of the twentieth century. "

" I've always had the wish, the need, and the obsession to become a public poet. "

" I've realised darkness and light are inter-dependent, just as death is an enhancer of life. "

" I've written on public matters, but I don't understand how anyone could tout me as a possible poet laureate when I wrote a poem on the abdication of King Charles III or about the sex life of the Royals... anybody who knew my work would know I'm not a contender. "

" I wanted to learn Latin and Greek and become a poet and acquire power over language. I only understand this clearly in retrospect, that my ability to study came from a hunger to learn all the resources of articulation. "

" I was brought up on music hall, and at the same time, I was studying Greek at the age of 12. "

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