If we understand the past, we are more likely to recognise what is happening around us.

A novel, in the end, is a container, a shape which you are trying to pour your story into.

Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn't work, throw it away. It's a nice feeling, and you don't want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need.

In a world without air all you breathe is adventure!

A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.

The human longing for story is so powerful, so primitive, that it seems like something not learned, but locked into our genes.

Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear.