Top 27 Quotes by Helen Dunmore

However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition.

I concentrate on the lives of individuals whom the reader comes to know and feel with intimately.

A novel, in the end, is a container, a shape which you are trying to pour your story into.

Writing children's books gives a writer a very strong sense of narrative drive.

If we understand the past, we are more likely to recognise what is happening around us.

However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned.

I was always influenced by language.

As individuals, we are shaped by story from the time of birth; we are formed by what we are told by our parents, our teachers, our intimates.

I would like people to come into my Dreamworld and then choose to stay.

My first collection of poems was published by Bloodaxe Books, which was then a very new imprint.