The result of this bestial lust is an indiscriminate and promiscuous splaying of all of my energies- wanting all, I accomplish nothing; desiring everything, I satisfy nothing and am satisfied by nothing.

I would prefer to write about everything; what else is there? But one must be selective.

Anton Bruckner wrote the same symphony nine times, trying to get it just right. He failed.

Our contemporary Tories prefer the term 'ordered liberty' to 'freedom'. The word 'freedom' scares them; it has too much of a paleolithic ring to it.

By the age of eighteen, a human has acquired enough joy and heartache to provide the food of reflection for a century.

Do I believe in ghosts? I believe in the ghosts that haunt the human mind.

I don't see how poetry can ever be easy... Real poetry, the thick, dense, intense, complicated stuff that lives and endures, requires blood sweat; blood and sweat are essential elements in poetry as well as behind it.