Craig Raine said this quote

...much of poetry in the making is the fiddle with a few items. You lay a word against another and wait. You try another word. And another. Yet another. You wait. You begin again. Listening. Looking. For the elusive inevitable thing which has to arrive before it is recognised. And, like Odysseus, may not be recognised at first.

~ Craig Raine

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

~ Craig Raine

No one is exempt and everyone's pain has a different smell. At night, when all the colours die,they hide in pairsand read about themselves—in colour, with their eyelids shut.

~ Craig Raine

Begin with the soft smelted upturned heart-shaped mouth made for smiling a smile kept for kindness, tenderness, incapable of malice. Am I going too fast for you?The almond eyes see out through their sleepy epicanthic fold. Trusting and calm, if a flicker from slowness, a further flicker from stupidity.Settled in slow-motion beauty, heart-breaking beauty.

~ Craig Raine