The great thing about living until you get a bit older if you are a writer, and especially a poet, is that you have more life to reflect on. And I think that if I am better now - and I think that I am probably better than I was - is because that I simply have more to think about, more to get under control, more to understand.

Even in moments of tranquility, Murray Walker sounds like a man whose trousers are on fire.

A luxury liner is really just a bad play surrounded by water.

John McEnroe looks as if he is serving round the edge of an imaginary building.

They had a... dog called Bluey. A know psychopath, Bluey would attack himself if nothing else was available.

Little books are the things to write at my age, I've decided. Avoid the big ones, go for the little ones.

How much atonement is enough? The bombing must be allowed as at least part-payment: those of our young people who are concerned about the moral problem posed by the Allied air offensive should at least consider the moral problem that would have been posed if the German civilian population had not suffered at all.