top of page
"The language has got to be fully alive - I can't bear dull, flaccid writing myself and I don't see why any reader should put up with it."
Standard
Customized
More

"All our words from loose using have lost their edge."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Language is the friendliest of the things from which we cannot escape."
Author Name
Personal Development

"'Mean to' don't pick no cotton."
Author Name
Personal Development

"If Bengali is my mother, then English is my father and friend."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Putting it into words will destroy any meaning."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Why people use "Was" I have heard some people to say "I was a smart kid at school - Eminem", but why "Was", was is a word for describing the past... which will mean that has started and ended... so what??? How to get it now? You aren't wise, are you?"
Author Name
Personal Development

"He is forced to coin words himself, and, taking his pain in one hand, and a lump of pure sound in the other (as perhaps the people of Babel did in the beginning), so to crush them together that a brand new word in the end drops out."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Words are the fallen ruins of silent majesty."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Kitai blinked slowly. "Why would you use the same word for these things? That is ridiculous.""We have a lot of words like that," Tavi said. "They can mean more than one thing.""That is stupid," Kitai said. "It is difficult enough to communicate without making it more complicated with words that mean more than one thing."
Author Name
Personal Development

"We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters."
Author Name
Personal Development
More

"To try to expunge an individual's history is a terrible violation."
History

"Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear."
Poetry

"A novel, in the end, is a container, a shape which you are trying to pour your story into."
Writing

"The language has got to be fully alive - I can't bear dull, flaccid writing myself and I don't see why any reader should put up with it."
Language

"The poets whom I knew then were all men and all seemed dauntingly sure of themselves - although I am sure that really they were as uncertain as I was."
Man

"My first collection of poems was published by Bloodaxe Books, which was then a very new imprint."
Books

"I hope that readers will tear through my books because they can't stop themselves - and then, maybe, read them again and find new things there."
Hope

"If we understand the past, we are more likely to recognise what is happening around us."
Past

"Writing children's books gives a writer a very strong sense of narrative drive."
Books

"I can remember being in my pram: children stayed in their prams much longer then than they do now. A big bouncy pram with black covers and a hood with metal clips that could trap your fingers. I was looking up at my sister who was sitting on the pram seat, with her back to me."
Family
bottom of page