I tell the gods are still alive / And they are not consoling.

I cannot understand why poetry is not taught at schools as a way of seeing, a quick, untiring path to essentials.

Do I think there's life after death? No, I think my books are my life after death.

Family life! The United Nations is child's play compared to the tugs and splits and need to understand and forgive in any family.

I sometimes imagine that as one grows older one comes to live a role which as a young person one merely 'played.

The garden is growth and change and that means loss as well as constant new treasures to make up for a few disasters.

One thing is certain, and I have always known it - the joys of my life have nothing to do with age. They do not change. Flowers, the morning and evening light, music, poetry, silence, the goldfinches darting about