Andrew Motion Quotes

We're always observing, and we're cautious people. We really want attention, but at the same time, we're ashamed of wanting attention. All those bizarre qualities of being outside are necessary for being a writer.

Writing is seeing. It is paying attention.

Life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention.

When we put the pen to paper, we articulate things in our life that we may have felt vague about. Before you write about something, somebody says, 'How do you feel?' and you say, 'Oh, I feel okay.' Then you write about it, and you discover you don't feel okay.

I'm trying to do what I have never done - give the impression one has on entering a room: one sees everything and at the same time nothing.

If you really want to know yourself, start by writing a book.

Anybody who dedicates himself to exploring the human condition, there's always a detached eye that's watching. In any situation, a little part of me is observing it, to see if there are any raw materials to create something else later.

I think writers, by nature, are more observers instead of participators.

When I go back and read my journals or fiction, I am always surprised. I may not remember having those thoughts, but they still exist and I know they are mine, and it's all part of making sense of who I am.

I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing.

Writing is a really good first step toward that goal of knowing yourself.

I don't choose to analyze what I have done and I think that is the right choice, because then I won't be spending my time creating.

Some entertainers don't pay attention to what's going on around them.

Sometimes you lose sight of what's going on around you.

The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.

For writers and artists, it's always a balancing act between wanting to be the center of attention and wanting to be invisible and watch what's going on.

The limelight is a tricky place, because you can't believe what's going on around you. You stop observing. You stop perceiving. You stop extending yourself, and you become isolated.

When you're in the throes of writing, I find, the lessons you've casually imparted to others are not in the forefront of your mind. Which may be good or bad. Probably both.

All the things worth writing about are outside me. I'm a lens, not a source. And even if it's not always a comfortable journey, it's always a stimulating one.

I am unobservant.

I was always an outsider, always standing outside, observing and trying to figure things out. Which is exactly what you need to do as a writer, I suppose.

How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.

One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.

When I was writing 'Bad Behavior,' I was very, very quiet. I would just sit there and listen to people. And if I was out in public, I was usually quiet, and people tended to assume I was stupid because I was a young, pretty girl who's quiet.

Let a man get up and say, Behold, this is the truth, and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say.