I feel often very close to the ecstasy and anguish which lie at the very heart of poetry - I am writing a lot.

Time spent with poets is never wasted.

Most people have to talk so they won't hear.

For poetry exists to break through to below the level of reason where the angels and monsters that the amenities keep in the cellar may come out to dance, to rove and roar, growling and singing, to bring life back to the enclosed rooms where too often we are only 'living and partly living.

It always comes back to the same necessity: go deep enough and there is a bedrock of truth, however hard.

One of the springs of poetry is joy.

One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.