Dylan Thomas Quotes

One Christmas was much like another… I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it.

The best poem is that whose worked-upon unmagical passages come closest, in texture and intensity, to those moments of magical accident.

Too many of the artists of Wales spend too much time talking about the position of the artists of Wales. There is only one position for an artist anywhere: and that is, upright.

The sun hums down through the cotton flowers of her dress into the bell of her heart and buzzes in the honey there and couches and kisses, lazy-loving and boozed, in her red-berried breast.

Hullo, Polly, my love, can you hear the dumb goose-hiss of the wives as they huddle and peck or flounce at a waddle away? Who cuddled you when? Which of their gandering hubbies moaned in Milk Wood for your naughty mothering arms and body like a wardrobe, love?

You’re thinking, you’re no better than you should be, Polly, and that’s good enough for me. Oh, isn’t life a terrible thing, thank God?

Nothing grows in our garden, only washing. And babies. And where’s their fathers live, my love? Over the hills and far away.

Straight faced in his cunning sleep he pulls the legs of his dreams.

And before you let the sun in, mind it wipes its shoes.

The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and the jolly-rogered sea.

Oh I’m a martyr to music.

To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobble streets silent and the hunched, courters’ -and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloe black, slow, black, crow black, fishing boat-bobbing sea.

I’ve had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that’s the record.

I fell in love – that is the only expression I can think of – at once, and am still at the mercy of words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behaviour very well, I think I can influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and gain, which they appear to enjoy.

If you want a definition of poetry, say: ‘Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing’ and let it go at that.

The joy and function of poetry is, and was, the celebration of man, which is also the celebration of God.

I hear John Arlott’s voice every weekend, describing cricket matches. He sounds like Uncle Tom Cobleigh reading Neville Cardus to the Indians.

And I rose In rainy autumn And walked abroad in the shower of all my days.

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour And over the sea wet church the size of a snail With its horns through mist and the castle Brown as owls.