Sylvia Plath was just a month and a half older than I, and when she committed suicide I was only 30 - and very shocked and sorry. I never knew her personally.

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

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.

Blackbirds are the cellos of the deep farms.

When everything is for 'fun' nothing is for the good.

I like rhyme because it is memorable, I like form because having to work to a pattern gives me original ideas.

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.