Andrew Motion Quotes

We live in a world of guns, bombs and terror. To conquer hate seems a nigh-impossible task.

The most terrifying thing I can think of is being alone - and I mean utterly alone, like no one else in the world alone - at night. That's the nucleus of the first story in my collection and it's also where the title came from for the book.

War is fear cloaked in courage.

Frightening things happen in solitude.

The fear of war is worse than war itself.

Is life less thrilling if your neighbors are rational, if they don’t bomb your power stations whenever they feel you need to be admonished? Is it less rousing if they don’t rattle your windows and nerves with indiscriminate sonic booms just because they can?

There are many people who live with terrorism every day.

War is hell. You can't photograph a flying bullet, but you can capture genuine fear.

The first time I experienced war, I thought the world was ending.

Our enemy of international terrorism respects no laws of warfare or morality, and its individual members take innocent lives, just to create chaos for news cameras.

And when Roger talks about the frightened ones running away from the bombs, I immediately thought of my days when I was young and I had to wear these gas masks.

I think in the case of horror, it's a chance to confront a lot of your worse fears and those fears usually have to do, ironically, with powerlessness and isolation.

Solitude terrifies the soul at twenty.

I'm still bothered by the threat of nuclear war.

I'd been to a number of war zones before in my life, but I had never been in one as terrifying as Chechnya.

I went through real darkness, but the ring was my light. That was the one place I felt safe. I could control what happened in the ring. My heart turned icy.

I am more afraid of alcohol than of all the bullets of the enemy.

This is the war I fear.

When walking through the 'valley of shadows,' remember, a shadow is cast by a Light.

You cannot avoid war in life, you cannot avoid the fear of terrorism, you cannot avoid those things now, they are a part of everyday demeanor.

There's no such thing as a crowded battlefield. Battlefields are lonely places.

To many men... the miasma of peace seems more suffocating than the bracing air of war.

The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty because freedom is their greatest fear - and they should be afraid, because freedom is on the march.

These days, our senses are bombarded with aggression. We are constantly confronted with global images of unending, escalating war and violence.

We will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve.