Mary > Mary's Quotes

“But life, they said, means life. Dying inside.
The Devil was evil, mad, but I was the Devil's wife
which made me worse. I howled in my cell.
If the Devil is gone then how could this be hell?”
― Carol Ann Duffy, The World's Wife

“Better off dead than giving in; not taking what you want.”
― Carol Ann Duffy, Selling Manhattan

“Then he started his period.
One week in bed.
Two doctors in.
Three painkillers four times a day.
And later a letter to the powers-that-be
demanding full-paid menstrual leave twelve weeks per year.
I see him now,
his selfish pale face peering at the moon
through the bathroom window.
The curse, he said, the curse.

- Mrs Tiresias”
― Carol Ann Duffy, The World's Wife

“I took an axe
To a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon
To see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf
As he slept.”
― Carol Ann Duffy

“Then he started his period.
One week in bed.
Two doctors in.
Three painkillers four times a day.
And later a letter to the powers-that-be
demanding full-paid menstrual leave twelve weeks per year.”
― Carol Ann Duffy, Selected Poems

“And here you come
with a shield for a heart
and a sword for a tongue”
― Carol Ann Duffy

“At childhood’s end, the houses petered out
into playing fields, the factory, allotments
kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men,
the silent railway line, the hermit’s caravan,
till you came at last to the edge of the woods.
It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf.

He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out loud
in his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy paw,
red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big ears
he had! What big eyes he had! What teeth!
In the interval, I made quite sure he spotted me,
sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and bought me a drink,

my first. You might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry.
The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods,
away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place
lit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake,
my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazer
snagged on twig and branch, murder clues. I lost both shoes

but got there, wolf’s lair, better beware. Lesson one that night,
breath of the wolf in my ear, was the love poem.
I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for
what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf?
Then I slid from between his heavy matted paws
and went in search of a living bird – white dove –

which flew, straight, from my hands to his hope mouth.
One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed, he said,
licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to the back
of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books.
Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head,
warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood.

But then I was young – and it took ten years
in the woods to tell that a mushroom
stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds
are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf
howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out,
season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axe

to a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon
to see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf
as he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and saw
the glistening, virgin white of my grandmother’s bones.
I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up.
Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone.

Little Red-Cap”
― Carol Ann Duffy, The World's Wife

“The living walk by the edge of a vast lake near the wise, drowned silence of the dead.”
― Carol Ann Duffy, The World's Wife

“Look, we all have wishes; granted.
But who has wishes granted?”
― Carol Ann Duffy, New Selected Poems, 1984-2004

“Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper,
It promises light
Like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
Like a lover.”
― Carol Ann Duffy

“Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“I suppose it's like the ticking crocodile, isn't it? Time is chasing after all of us.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“Sometimes Peter treated her like she was the only thing in the forest. Sometimes he was so distracted by the things around him that she had to keep up or be left behind. But a lot of times, she knew he did it on purpose, and she didn't have to know why. He seemed to have reasons for doing things even he didn't understand.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, Tiger Lily

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
― William Shakespear, Hamlet

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
― William Shakespeare, The Tempest

“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“You speak an infinite deal of nothing.”
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

“These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness
And in the taste confounds the appetite.
Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it will break.”
― William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew

“My only love sprung from my only hate!
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
Prodigious birth of love it is to me,
That I must love a loathed enemy.”
― William Shakespeare

“Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“Expectation is the root of all heartache.”
― William Shakespeare

“Love is heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, sick and healthy, asleep and awake- its everything except what it is! (Act 1, scene 1)”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet

“One may smile, and smile, and be a villain; at least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“They do not love that do not show their love.”
― William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona

“Presume not that I am the thing I was;
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn'd away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.”
― William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part Two