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Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage Quotes

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Famous Simon Armitage Quotes

“Through pity, then, I can't resist delivering a song of bliss when witnessing the painful trace that love leaves in a young girl's face. I try to teach them, through my song, love of that kind will not last long, because, just as my song relents, love rarely stays when it descends on children's hearts, but meets its death the way that warmth fades on our breath.”

“I am very bothered when I think of the bad things I have done in my life. Not least that time in the chemistry lab when I held a pair of scissors by the blades and played the handles in the naked lilac flame of the Bunsen burner; then called your name, and handed them over. O the unrivalled stench of branded skin as you slipped your thumb and middle finger in, then couldn’t shake off the two burning rings. Marked, the doctor said, for eternity. Don’t believe me, please, if I say that was just my butterfingered way, at thirteen, of asking you if you would marry me." — I Am Very Bothered”

“I intend 'Dämmerung' to be an ironic meditation on the financial rewards of poetry and a tragicomic lament on the passing of time and the changes in literary taste. The other poets mentioned are my poetic cohort from the U.K. I wrote the piece in situ, as it were, while making a television documentary about World War I in Germany.”