Andrew Motion Quotes

A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, 'Huh. It works. It makes sense.'

Obviously, if a director doesn't communicative a clear, relevant vision of the material, it will not succeed no matter how good the material.

With TV, you get on a show and you're there for 11 years playing the same character. I would pull my hair out. Yes, the money is good. But I'm really not in this business to chase dollars.

Good politics starts with empathy, proceeds to analysis, then sets out values and establishes the vision, before getting to the nitty-gritty of policy solutions.

Put not your trust in new leaders, better systems, new organisations or regulatory reorganisation. They may well be good and necessary, but will to some degree fail.

Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward; it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.

There is no reason why government should not be as efficient as any good business.

I've actually come to respect the most irritatingly challenging people I've worked with as really valuable in improving group decision-making and what to do and what to invest in.

I don't know where we should take this company, but I do know that if I start with the right people, ask them the right questions, and engage them in vigorous debate, we will find a way to make this company great.

I would rather stop [making movies] too soon than too late.

There are many poets that use as my models. In my first book of poems, I had several for the "Sleepwalkers," I had several poems that were apprentice poems like this in which I take a walk with a poet who is no longer alive.

Much verse fails of being poetry because it was not written exactly at the right crisis, though it may have been inconceivably near to it. It is only by a miracle that poetry is written at all. It is not recoverable thought, but a hue caught from a vaster receding thought.

We can solve many problems in an appropriate way, without any difficulty, if we cultivate harmony, friendship and respect for one another.

A day which passed without a poem from my pen I considered lost and misused.

The problem with requiring people to be loud and angry to get things done is that you're now surrounded by people who are loud and angry.

I find myself absolutely fulfilled when I have written a poem, when I'm writing one. Having written one, then you fall away very rapidly from having been a poet to becoming a sort of poet in rest, which isn't the same thing at all. But I think the actual experience of writing a poem is a magnificent one.

The way to become a poet is to read poetry and to imitate what you read and to read passionately and widely and in as involved a way as you can.

There are certain times when most people are in a disposition of being informed, and 'tis incredible what a vast good a little truth might do, spoken in such seasons.

Writing poetry is like always being in love. What masochism! What luxury!

Management is the most noble of professions if it's practiced well.

I'm really, really happy with what I do for a living. I mean, that's what I consider work, like being on set, bringing a character to life and, you know, working with other actors and directors and stuff.

Leadership is people taking the initiative, carrying things through, having ideas and the imagination to get something started, and exhibiting particular skills in different areas.

Hence the saying: The enlightened ruler lays his plans well ahead; the good general cultivates his resources.

A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

I feel like I have to do the best job I can to basically say, "OK, I understand - you have every right to be angry, but anger is not a plan. Here's what I want to do, and that's why I hope you will support me, because I think it will actually improve the lives of Americans."