In my subconscious, my books were part of a single emotional journey.

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.

When we make a change, it's so easy to interpret our unsettledness as unhappiness, and our unhappiness as a result of having made the wrong decision. Our mental and emotional states fluctuate madly when we make big changes in our lives, and some days we could tight-rope across Manhattan, and other days we are too weary to clean our teeth. This is normal. This is natural. This is change.

The work that lasts over time is the work which still speaks to us when all contemporary interest in that work is extinct.

Everything is imprinted for ever with what it once was.

Sometimes you have to live in precarious and temporary places. Unsuitable places. Wrong places. Sometimes the safe place won't help you.

A character has a distinctive voice - you should be able to hear them in your head and conduct a conversation with them while you're out walking. If the answers surprise you, you know it's the character speaking and not you.