Craig Raine Quotes

Great writers arrive among us like new diseases threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible.

I used to carry a copy of Ulysses with me everywhere just in case I was knocked down by a bus. It seemed more important than having clean underwear.

Here she is at her kitchen table, fingering a jigsaw of thalidomide ginger, thinking about the arthritis in her hands.

The task of the artist at any time is uncompromisingly simple - to discover what has not yet been done, and to do it.

It was like being trapped forever in the present tense of the first line of a first reader.

Her laugh. The way she smoked before she gave up. Smoke trickling up her nostrils. Spokes of smoke when she spoke.

I am awaiting the return of the nerves to the epidermis. They're being pretty damn slow about it.