A loose horse is any horse sensible enough to get rid of its rider at an early stage and carry on unencumbered.

Generally it is our failures that civilize us. Triumph confirms us in our habits.

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.

If an artist is any good at all, then he or she will have a later phase that's more interesting than the early one.

The secret for an artist is to make that a subject and not bang your head against the wall and give up. But to turn it into and treat the new subject matter, which is one's own vanishing.

When I was very young, one of my favourite books was Captain's Courageous and I suppose one of the reasons I loved it, it was a life I knew I should have had, learning all the different bits of the ship and learning to catch fish and rig sails and to -all the things that I never learned and I never learned the discipline, but I hungered after it.

One of the virtues of the NHS... it doesn't worry you about money at the moment when you're least capable of doing anything about it.