Burning Quote by Don Paterson

“While you spoke, it reached into the room switching off the mirrors in their frames and undeveloping your photographs; it gently drew a knife…

— Don Paterson

“Fate's book, but my italics.”

— Don Paterson

The poem, in a sense, is no more or less than a little machine for remembering itself ... Poetry is therefore primarily a commemorative act.

— Don Paterson

“Lurking behind this connecting silence is a brooding suspicion over the extent to which the perceptual user-preferences of the human animal limit and distort…

— Don Paterson

“forget the ink, the milk, the blood - all was washed clean with the flood we rose up from the falling waters the fallen…

— Don Paterson

There's no fury more righteous than that of a sinner accused of the wrong sin.

— Don Paterson

We could easily have evolved eyelids thick enough to keep out the light, but we still need to see the shadows fall across them.…

— Don Paterson

“A poetic form is essentially a codified pattern of silence. We have a little silence at the end of a line, a bigger one…

— Don Paterson

So we start with an oversignifying reader. Those texts that appear to reward this reader for this additional investment - text that we find…

— Don Paterson

“Critics all have this idea that authors inhabit another dimensional realm, right up to their first smack in the mouth - which feels to…

— Don Paterson

We turn from the light to see.

— Don Paterson

No fury more righteous than that of a sinner accused of the wrong sin.

— Don Paterson