When modern writers gave up telling stories, they gave up the greatest thing we had.

The only way out is the way through, just as you cannot escape death except by dying. Being unable to write, you must examine in writing this being unable, which becomes for the present -henceforth?- the subject to which you are condemned.

Shakespeare tells the same stories over and over in so many guises that it takes a long time before you notice.

When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.

I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.

I've never read a political poem that's accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants.

Short stories amount for the most part to parlour tricks, party favours with built-in snappers, gadgets for including recognition and reversals