Absolute power corrupts absolutely; and if you surrender your personal responsibility to a government which promises to take care of you, they will only take care of themselves.

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.

A lot happens by accident in poetry.

I've thought of the last line of some poems for years and tried them out, It wouldn't work because the last line was much too beautiful for the poem.

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

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

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.