Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.

Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole.'-William Boot

It doesn't matter what people call you unless they call you pigeon pie and eat you up.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor [group think] of the age and not go flopping along. By doing this he helps us to question and reassess our past, present and future situations, our assumptions and our options.

That was the change in her from ten years ago; that, indeed, was her reward, this haunting, magical sadness which spoke straight to the heart and struck silence; it was the completion of her beauty.

Words have basic inalienable meanings, departure from which is either conscious metaphor or inexcusable vulgarity.

But in the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. No one would think of making an after-dinner speech without the help of poetry. It used to be the classics, now it’s lyric verse.