Wendy Cope Quotes

#1. Some socks are loners They can't live in pairs.

Wendy Cope

#2. I like a quiet life.

Wendy Cope

#3. My heart has made its mind up
And I'm afraid it's you.
Whatever you've got lined up,
My heart has made its mind up
And if you can't be signed up
This year, next year will do.
My heart has made its mind up
And I'm afraid it's you.

Wendy Cope

#4. 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?'

Wendy Cope

#5. Never trust a journalist.

Wendy Cope

#6. There is some humour in 'Family Values.' I don't want everyone to think it's not going to make them laugh. But there are quite a lot of poems there that aren't funny at all.

Wendy Cope

#7. 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.

Wendy Cope

#8. I've never been more famous than I was, suddenly, in 1986.

Wendy Cope

#9. When a poem doesn't work, the first question to ask yourself is, 'Am I telling the truth?'

Wendy Cope

#10. Another Christmas Poem
Blood Christmas, here again.
Let us raise a loving cup:
Peace on earth, goodwill to men,
And make them do the washing-up.

Wendy Cope

#11. Write to amuse? What an appalling suggestion!
I write to make people anxious and miserable and to
worsen their indigestion.

Wendy Cope

#12. There are so many kinds of awful men One can't avoid them all. She often said She'd never make the same mistake again: She always made a new mistake instead.

Wendy Cope

#13. Making Cocoa For Kingsley Amis
It was a dream I had last week
And some kind of record seemed vital.
I knew it wouldn't be much of a poem
But I love the title.

Wendy Cope

#14. I have a theory that if you've got the kind of parents who want to send you to boarding school, you're probably better off at boarding school.

Wendy Cope

#15. Possibly I've become less funny as I've been happier.

Wendy Cope

#16. I always tell students that writing a poem and publishing it are two quite separate things, and you should write what you have to write, and if you're afraid it's going to upset someone, don't publish it.

Wendy Cope

#17. The interesting thing is that you don't often meet a poet who doesn't have a sense of humour, and some of them do keep it out of their poems because they're afraid of being seen as light versifiers.

Wendy Cope

#18. The reason modern poetry is difficult is so that the poet's wife cannot understand it.

Wendy Cope

#19. 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.

Wendy Cope

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

Wendy Cope

#21. 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.

Wendy Cope

#22. I like buying clothes, especially as I get a tax-deductible allowance.

Wendy Cope