Edwin Morgan Quotes

Nobody really knows whether they are a poet. I knew I was interested from the age of 15.

I didn't start off as a journalist; I started off as a poet. My ambition was to practise poetry. Then I found journalism, but that other voice never fled from me.

No, I never thought that I would be a writer. I had always been told I could write well, but it never occurred to me that I might make my living that way.

I could never have pictured myself writing a book when I was 25 years old. My mom was an English teacher but I wasn't that way growing up.

It took me years of attempts and failed drafts before I finally wrote the elegies I needed to write.

Granted, I'm someone who loves words. I've always loved poetry - so it's suited to me.

I had always been literary, in the sense of loving poetry and discovering novels, but I found my voice, as they say, in an office full of elderly people who looked after blind ex-servicemen.

I had feelings that I didn't know what to do with, and I felt better when I started writing them. I thought of it as poetry. I did notice girls really liked it. Better than football. They liked the combination.

I chose poetry. Actually, poetry chose me.

I still have a feeling that I haven't written the best that I can write. I think all poets must feel this: that there is constantly something new to be discovered in the language. It's like a thrilling encounter, and you can find things.

I gave up writing for seven years (very biblical) and picked it up again, still clueless and still seeking the exotic, when I was twenty-one.

At eight, I made a commitment to poetry. Until then, I thought I'd be a policeman. But I went a whole night without sleeping, and the next day the world had changed. It needed a different language.

Well, I had this little notion - I started writing when I was eleven, writing poetry. I was passionately addicted to it; it was my great refuge through adolescence.

I began the way nearly everybody I ever heard of - I began writing poetry. And I find that to be quite usual with writers, their trying their hand at poetry.

I'm inspired by the poets, so I'm always going to give in that direction, rather than in any other. It's the making of me... and also the downfall of me.

By the time I hit college, my secret shame was the reason I was an actor was my own words sort of dried up. I stopped writing. I stopped being able to form my own vision. That's actually what my first feature is about - looking back at two different selves.

I can't say that I ever actually decided to become a writer. It kind of snuck up on me.

I didn't think about whether I was writing poems. I was thinking. And the more I was thinking, the more there was I didn't understand.

I think that I've just kind of found my niche, if that makes sense. I still write the same, but I feel like I've found what separates me, and I always try to stay in that when I write. It took me a long time to discover that, so I try to be protective.

The music of language became extremely important to me, and obvious to me. By the time I was seven I was writing myself. I was a poet.

It is said an artist spends their whole life trying to get to the place where their heart was first opened up. 'Rent' was that place for me.

Basically, I always wanted to be an author but went through all these other jobs while getting up the nerve to finally go for it with my writing! Thank goodness it worked; who knows what I might have done next?

It was through poetry I learned just to appreciate my own voice and to not think of my voice in terms of what it needs to be able to do, but what it can do.

In school I was sidelined by Tamil language teachers. But in the film industry, I got interested in Tamil poetry after reading and working with the Vairamuthu.

I think all poets must feel this: that there is constantly something new to be discovered in the language. It's like a thrilling encounter, and you can find things.