This quality becomes important at a time when almost everyone is a poet. And as I said, we live in an age where almost everybody is a poet, but scarcely anyone can write a poem.

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

A sense of humour is common sense dancing.

When I was young I never believed that Australia was anything else except blessed. I thought it was a little dull when I was young, but that was 'cause I was a snob.

She was good at playing abstract confusion in the same way that a midget is good at being short.

Not everyone who wants to make a film is crazy, but almost everyone who is crazy wants to make a film.

If the humanism that makes civilization civilized is to be preserved into the new century, it will need advocates. These advocates will need a memory, and part of that memory will need to be of an age in which they were not yet alive.