I burst into tears and I cry and cry until it feels as though it is not salt and water being squeezed from my eyes, but blood.

Surely we all occasionally buy books because of a daydream we're having - a little fantasy about the people we might turn into one day, when our lives are different, quieter, more introspective, and when all the urgent reading, whatever that might be, has been done. We never arrive at that point, needless to say.

The trouble with history is that there are too many people involved

The plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone

Unhappiness really meant something back then. Now it's just a drag, like a cold or having no money.

contemporary poetry is a kind of Reykjavik, a place where accessibility and intelligence have been fighting a Cold War by proxy for the last half-century.

You had to live in your own bubble. You couldn't force your way into someone else's, because then it wouldn't be a bubble any more.