It may be said that poems are in one way like icebergs: only about a third of their bulk appears above the surface of the page.

I think there was a revolution in poetry, associated chiefly with Eliot and Pound; but maybe it is of the nature of revolutions or of the nature of history that their innovations should later come to look trivial or indistinguishable from technical tricks.

I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.

I think there's one thing which distinguishes our art - we don't consider. We don't think. We write a little verse because it comes to us.

Language is remarkable, except under the extreme constraints of mathematics and logic, it never can talk only about what it's supposed to talk about but is always spreading around.

The nice thing about the Bible is it doesn't give you too many facts. Two an a half lines and it tells you the whole story and that leaves you a great deal of freedom to elaborate on how it might have happened.

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