We should tackle reality in a slightly jokey way, otherwise we miss its point.

We are all hunting for rational reasons for believing in the absurd.

It's unthinkable not to love - you'd have a severe nervous breakdown. Or you'd have to be Philip Larkin.

It’s only with great vulgarity that you can achieve real refinement, only out of bawdry that you can get tenderness.

Art like life is an open secret.

Poetry is what happens when an anxiety meets a technique.

'We live' writes Pursewarden somewhere 'lives based upon selected fictions. Our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time — not by our personalities as we like to think. Thus every interpretation oа reality is based upon a unique position. Two paces east or west and the whole picture is changed.