democracy is dying. We are ruled by faceless bureaucrats and lecherous puritans. ... You think about it. 'All right for me but not for you' is their philosophy.

There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.

I think a poet, like a painter, should be a craftsperson.

I am now seventy, rather glad, really, that I won't live to see the horrors to come in the 21st century.

Yes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions.

There's no friend like someone who has known you since you were five.

I work very hard on all my poems, but most of the work consists of trying not to sound as if I had worked. I try to make them sound as natural as possible, but within a quite strict form, which to my ears has a lot to do with musical rhythm and sound.