A Quote by Simon Armitage

Killing time in the precinct, I find a copy of one of my early volumes in a dump-bin on the pavement outside the charity shop. The price is 10p. It is a signed copy. Under the signature, in my own handwriting, are the words, "To mum and dad".
Start copying what you love. Copy copy copy copy. At the end of the copy you will find your self.
Clever people can copy the handwriting of an artist - it's like forging a person's signature.
I think I am too interested in my own ideas to copy anyone else's, but I find that other people's imagery, the flow of language in the outside world, games with words, and ideas about relationships are all most important to me.
Copy is not written. If anyone tells you ‘you write copy’, sneer at them. Copy is not written. Copy is assembled. You do not write copy, you assemble it. You are working with a series of building blocks, you are putting the building blocks together, and then you are putting them in certain structures, you are building a little city of desire for your person to come and live in.
I remember as a child I just would copy everyone else's handwriting, and now I have sort of a version of my sister's handwriting. And I feel like - sometimes I feel that way for my voice.
We buy a copy of 'Gravity's Rainbow,' say, and we carry our copy home. We open it; we fall into it. And it is here that the word 'copy' fails. Because what I experience when I read 'Gravity's Rainbow,' or 'Beloved,' or 'The Moviegoer,' is not at all a 'copy' of what you experience when you read the same novel.
I get nostalgic for things that didn't really exist. I might have a cassette from the first time a Melle Mel track, say, got played on radio in Manchester. And it might be a copy of a copy of a copy of a tape and there's all these weird nuances and distortions that have affected what I know as the truth, if you like, of that track.
For six months I couldn't sleep. With insomnia, nothing's real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.
What's burning down is a re-creation of a period revival house patterned after a copy of a copy of a copy of a mock Tudor big manor house. It's a hundred generations removed from anything original, but the truth is aren't we all?
People who copy what exists copy a point-in-time artifact, and if you are managing the process correctly you are already hard at work on the next thing.
Make your copy straightforward to read, understand and use. Use easy words; those that are used for everyday speech. Use phrases that are not too imprecise and very understandable. Do not be too stuffy; remove pompous words and substitute them with plain words. Minimize complicated gimmicks and constructions. If you can't give the data directly and briefly, you must consider writing the copy again.
Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.
When I was born, my dad was a scaffolder, and my mum worked in a chip shop. Then my mum taught herself how to be a hairdresser and ended up with her own salon; my dad became a postman and then a counter clerk. Our first house didn't have a bathroom.
The copy of an ad is merely a punning gag to distract the critical faculties while the image of the product goes to work on the hypnotized viewer. Those who have spent their lives protesting about 'false and misleading ad copy' are godsends to advertisers, as teetotalers are to brewers, and moral censors are to books and films. The protesters are the best acclaimers and accelerators. Since the advent of pictures, the job of the ad copy is as incidental and latent as the 'meaning' of a poem is to a poem, or the words of a song are to a song.
If your entire conception of what's possible in fantasy only comes from other fantasy books, you're going to go on to create a copy of a copy of a copy. There's nothing original there, nothing dynamic. Which is fine if that's your goal, but I've always wanted to do something no one else was doing before.
Alexander Liberman was very smart, very elegant. At the end, he didn't have much patience with me because I was a young, anxious, nervous photographer. I worried that I was copying too many other people. And he said, "It's all right to copy people, as long as the people you copy are good and you copy them well."
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!