I deeply adored my mum. She was an extraordinary person, even for the prejudice Im likely to have. She was beautiful, amusing, a tremendous elaborator of things into comic proportions and extravagant in her imagination. – Andrew Motion
Poetry is at the centre of my life, too, emotionally speaking, and intellectually speaking – its just that Im one of those people who enjoy doing other stuff as well. – Andrew Motion
Im not precisely saying that a really good board meeting at the MLA (Museums, Libraries and Archives Coucil) makes me want to go and write poetry, but there is a pleasure in doing that sort of thing well. – Andrew Motion
Thanks partly to the kind of poets that we now have and partly to funding, theres been a gigantic shift in the way poetry is perceived… Poems on the Underground, poets in schools, football clubs, zoos. – Andrew Motion
Its a wonderful thing working with young actors. I know a lot of people dont like working with children. I actually adore it, because you watch their imagination open up and you watch them start to learn this job that Ive been doing for so long. They come with such a lack of cynicism. – Michelle Forbes