I am not ready to die, / But I am learning to trust death / As I have trusted life.

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.

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

May we agree that private life is irrelevant? Multiple, mixed, ambiguous at best - out of it we try to fashion the crystal clear, the singular, the absolute, and that is what is relevant; that is what matters.

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!

I believe that children long for form just as grownups do, and that it releases rather than cramps creative energy.

What is destructive is impatience, haste, expecting too much too fast.