Wendy Cope Thinking Quotations

I think it's a question which particularly arises over women writers: whether it's better to have a happy life or a good supply of tragic plots.

I was single for a long time and felt very much alone in the world, and talk of family values upset me very much at that phase in my life, because I used to think: 'What about people like me?

I've said what I'm prepared to say in my poems, and then journalists think that you're going to tell them a whole lot more.

In my case, the long gaps between my books have got quite a lot to do with lack of confidence. A lot of the time when I'm not writing I start thinking I can't do it.

I used to think all poets were Byronic Mad, bad and dangerous to know. And then I met a few. See Lamb 486:25.