When we admit our vulnerability, we include others. If we deny it, we shut them out.

... if one does not have wild dreams of achievement, there is no spur even to get the dishes washed. One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.

My musical genius reached its apex thirty years ago when I played the triangle in Haydn's children's symphony, so I could not play unless you needed someone to make one sustained note!

A great silence has descended on me for the last six months. I am as silent as an Arab in the desert, as dry, thirsty, and full of wonder and rumours which do not materialize into camels or travellers at all, but just vanish into the silent spaces from where they came. I expect this is a good thing though it is extremely irritating - the brink of a voice and never a voice.

I long for the bulbs to arrive, for the early autumn chores are melancholy, but the planting of bulbs is the work of hope and is always thrilling.

For me the moral dilemma this past year has been how to make peace with the unacceptable.

a poet never feels useful.