Poets will never be the highest-paid writers in the world. Instead, poetry will go on cutting a hand-made path through the mass-market insanity. For me, anyway, that path is the one that leads to the Chapel of the Grail.

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

I don't want to eke out my life like a resource in short supply. The only selfish life is a timid one. To hold back, to withdraw, to keep the best in reserve, both overvalues the self, and undervalues what the self is.

Each book is a different staging post on the writer's journey, and each book stands by itself, regardless of the writer's relationship to it.

But not all dark places need light, I have to remember that.

I think heterosexuality and homosexuality are a kind of psychosis, and the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Now that I have lost you I cannot allow you to develop, you must be a photograph not a poem.