Roger McGough Quotations

I wish the word whimsical wasn't used now.

I was put off by people at school - my cabbage wasn't as good as other people's, you know, so that put me off.

Whereas with poetry no one has to show anybody really, and you don't have to tell anyone you're doing it.

We shouldn't have got married, really. Shouldn't have got married. Too young. Not ready for it.

Better is a big ambition. Some people don't want that ambition as a writer. Some people seem to want to unsettle the reader. I don't know.

The general at the radar screenRubbed his hands with glee,And grinning pressed the buttonAnd started world war three.

People can put their best poems straight onto the web.

If I decide to be indecisive, that's my decision

I could never begin a poem: 'When I am dead' In case it tempted Fate, and Fate gave way.

I'm terrified of switching the computer on because there are so many poems

Yes, you can feel very alone as a poet and you sometimes think, is it worth it? Is it worth carrying on? But because there were other poets, you became part of a scene. Even though they were very different writers, it made it easier because you were together

Everyday I think about dying About disease, starvation, violence, terrorism, war, the end of the world. It helps keep my mind off things.

If the heart bleeds love, bare it, If the martyr's crown fits, wear it.

If I do a poetry reading I want people to walk out and say they feel better for having been there - not because you've done a comedy performance but because you're talking about your father dying or having young children, things that touch your soul

Do people who wave at trains Wave at the driver, or at the train itself? Or, do people who wave at trains Wave at the passengers? Those hurtling strangers, The unidentifiable flying faces?

Let me die a youngman's death not a clean and in-between- the-sheets, holy-water death.

by thus keeping one pace ahead of myself I need never catch up with the truth.

You will put on a dress of guilt and shoes with broken high ideals.

There's the moon trying to look romanticMoon's too old that's her troubleAren't we all?

The only problem with Haiku is that you just get started and then