As a young man, Yeats spoke to me in a way I could understand. Shakespeare I couldn't understand, but Yeats I could. It was his subject matter and also I really admired the way he put his personal life on the line.

To keep our hearts open is probably the most urgent responsibility you have as you get older.

It just takes a long time for me [to write a song]. I'm very slow. And it comes, kind of, by dribbles and drops.

Everybody knows that you've been faithful, give or take a night or two.

The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it's overturned the order of the soul.

I think the term poet is a very exalted term and should be applied to a man at the end of his work. When he looks back over the body of his work and he's written poetry then let the verdict be that he's a poet.

Comic books, movies, radio programmes centered their entertainment around the fact of torture. With the clearest of consciences, with a patriotic intensity, children dreamed, talked, acted orgies of physical abuse. Imaginations were released to wander on a reconnaissance mission from Cavalry to Dachau. European children starved and watched their parents scheme and die. Here we grew up with toy whips. Early warning against our future leaders, the war babies.