The streets, at least in this part of town, seemed impossibly clean in comparison to London. The public telephones were unvandalised. For a London telephone booth to look like that it would have to be guarded around the clock by the SAS.

The rattle of plastic keys reminds me of a squadron of butterflies failing to fight their way out of a paper bag.

Spending all my remaining money on a ticket to Florence was rendered needlessly complicated by the fact that none of the ticket-sellers had ever heard of the place. At last their supervisor showed up and set them straight by informing them that the city they had always referred to as 'Firenze' was in reality called Florence.

She wasn't just beautiful. She was like the sun coming up: coming up giggling. She was giggling as if she had just remembered something funny.

People should be stopped from writing poetry. There's far too much of it. And if they're any good, they'll go ahead anyways.

One way or another, all the poets of the thirties and forties reacted to Auden, either by rejecting him or trying to absorb him.

My niece is - her name is Sasha, is currently learning Russian at Melbourne University and I look forward to the day when I can talk to her about Pushkin.