You can never get a woman to sit down and listen to a drum solo.

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.

Freedom and diversity guard each other, and if a country could form the whole of one's character, Napoleon III and Victor Hugo would have been the same person... if national identity means anything, it means something that comes with you wherever you go, and stays with you no matter how long you stay away.

She [Marilyn Monroe] was good at being inarticulately abstracted for the same reason that midgets are good at being short.

The repeat run of Fawlty Towers (BBC2) drew bigger audiences than ever and deservedly so. Statistical surveys reveal that only the television critic of the Spectator is incapable of seeing the joke, which is that Basil Fawlty has the wrong temperament to be a hotel proprietor, just as some other people have the wrong temperament to be television critics.

It's a big thing to call yourself a poet. All I can say is that I have always written poems. I don't think I'm interested in any discussion about whether I'm a good poet, a bad poet or a great poet. But I am sure, I want to write great poems. I think every poet should want that.

It's my mission to tell the Australians from abroad in my work that Australia is a wonderful place.