We two remake our world by naming it / Together, knowing what words mean for us / And for the other for whom current coin / Is cold speech - but we say, the tree, the pool, / And see the fire in the air, the sun, our sun, / Anybody's sun, the world's sun, but here, now / Particularly our sun.

Literary critics make natural detectives.

I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. (The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.)

I did a lot of my writing as though I was an academic, doing some piece of research as perfectly as possible.

I'm more interested in books than people, and I always expect everybody else to be, but they're not.

Funny way to spend your life, though, studying another chap's versifying.

It's a terrible poison, writing.