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Alice Oswald Quotes


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Quotes by Alice Oswald

Showing 1-10 of 38 Quotes by Alice Oswald

It's a relief to hear the rain. It's the sound of billions of drops, all equal, all equally committed to falling, like a sudden outbreak of democracy. Water, when it hits the ground, instantly becomes a puddle or rivulet or flood.

~Alice Oswald

Topics: Becomes Billions Committed Democracy Drops Equal Equally Falling Flood Ground Hear Hits Instantly Like Outbreak Rain Relief Sound Sudden Water

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Most spiders eat and remake their webs every night.

~Alice Oswald

Topics: Eat Every Every Night Most Night Remake Spiders Web

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A living tree is a changing, sleeve shape, a wet, thin, bright green creature that survives in the thin layer between heartwood and bark. It stands waiting for light, which it catches in the close-woven sieves of its leaves.

~Alice Oswald

Topics: Bark Between Bright Changing Creature Green Layer Leaves Light Living Shape Sleeve Stands Survives Thin Tree Waiting Wet Which

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I have this exercise where I force myself to look out from the flower's point of view at these great walloping humans coming down the path, and try, just try and feel it from their point of view because it's a different world to them, a fascinating hard one.

~Alice Oswald

Topics: Because Coming Different Different World Down Exercise Fascinating Feel Flower Force Great Hard Humans Just Look Myself Out Path Point Point Of View Them Try View Where World

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The sea has this contradictory quality, that the more you see of it, the more it overwhelms the eye and disappears in its own brightness. Like a flame, whose meaning is light but whose centre is dark, it demands to be undefined.

~Alice Oswald

Topics: Brightness Centre Contradictory Dark Demands Disappears Eye Flame Light Like Meaning More Own Quality Sea See Undefined Whose You

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Spring, when the earth tilts closer to the sun, runs a strict timetable of flowers.

~Alice Oswald

Topics: Closer Earth Flowers Runs Spring Strict Sun Timetable

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One night, I lay awake for hours, just terrified. When the dawn finally came up - the comfortable blue sky, the familiar world returning - I could think of no other way to express my relief than through poetry. I made a decision there and then that it was what I wanted to do. Every time I pulled a wishbone, it was what I asked for.

~Alice Oswald

Topics: Asked Awake Blue Came Comfortable Could Dawn Decision Every Every Time Express Familiar Finally Hours Just Lay Made Night One Night Other Poetry Pulled Relief Returning Sky Terrified Than Then There And Then Think Through Time Up Wanted Way World

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Webs are made mostly of spaces. They break easily. They barely exist. They belong to the category of half-things: mist, smoke, shrouds, ghosts, membranes, retinas or rags; and they quickly fill up with un-things: old legs and wings and heads and hollow abdomens and body bags of wasps.

~Alice Oswald

Topics: Bags Barely Belong Body Break Category Easily Exist Fill Ghosts Heads Hollow Legs Made Mist Mostly Old Quickly Rags Smoke Spaces Up Web Wings

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If you bend a branch until it's horizontal, the sap will slow to a stopping point: a comma or colon, made of leaves grown into one another and over one another and hardened. Out of this pause comes a flower, which unfolds itself in spirals, as if the leaf form, unable to keep to its line, had begun to pivot.

~Alice Oswald

Topics: Another Begun Bend Branch Colon Comma Flower Form Grown Had Hardened Horizontal Itself Keep Leaf Leaves Line Made Out Over Pause Point Sap Slow Spirals Stopping Unable Unfolds Until Which Will You

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A dead tree, cut into planks and read from one end to the other, is a kind of line graph, with dates down one side and height along the other, as if trees, like mathematicians, had found a way of turning time into form.

~Alice Oswald

Topics: Along Cut Dates Dead Down End Form Found Graph Had Height Kind Like Line Mathematicians Other Read Side Time Tree Trees Turning Way

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Biography

Nationality: British

Type: Poet

Born: Unknown

Links

Find Alice Oswald on Amazon

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