In the First World War, people would be receiving letters from loved ones who had been dead for weeks, and they would not know until that black-bordered telegram arrived. I remember, of course, when it was letters only, or the telephone, and you did not make expensive long-distance calls unless it was, "Come home to the funeral," or the like.

Plato said that poets should be excluded from the ideal republic because they are such liars. I am a poet, and I affirm that this is true. About no subject are poets tempted to lie so much as about their own lives; I know one of them who has floated at least five versions of his autobiography, none of them true. I of course - being also a novelist - am a much more truthful person than that. But since poets lie, how can you believe me?

I don't think of poetry as a 'rational' activity but as an aural one. My poems usually begin with words or phrases which appeal more because of their sound than their meaning, and the movement and phrasing of a poem are very important to me.

He’d developed a strangely tender feeling towards such words, as if they were children abandoned in the woods and it was his duty to rescue them.

Love is giving, marriage is buying and selling. You can't put love into a contract.

I am too old to have ever been very worried about what "genre" any given book of mine might be. I read everything. I am easily amused.

Write down the thoughts and even more, write down a specific line. If you don't, it'll fly away forever.