The poet will not be satisfied with recording, the poet will have to transform.

I realised something important: whatever is on the outside can be taken away at any time. Only what is inside you is safe.

You are a pool of clear water where the light plays

The body can endure compromise and the mind can be seduced by it. Only the heart protests. The heart. Carbon-based primitive in a silicon world.

I feel in colour, strong tones that I hue down for the comfort of the pastelly inclined. Beige and magnolia and a hint of pink are what the well-decorated heart is wearing; who wants my blood red and vein-blue?

Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become.

There is no greater grief than to find no happiness, but happiness in what is past.