I'm very gregarious, but I love being in the hills on my own.

If I wrote a play with four characters every single one of them would talk like me regardless of age or sex.

All those authors there, most of whom of course I've never met. That's the poetry side, that's the prose side, that's the fishing and miscellaneous behind me. You get an affection for books that you've enjoyed.

In fact a lot of them I think are absolute baloney. Those Charles Olsens and people like that. At first I was interested in seeing what they were up to, what they were doing, why they were doing it. They never moved me in the way that one is moved by true poetry.

I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I'd throw them out.

I said I have no powers of invention. Well, I also have no powers of mimicry.

Well, I'm a light traveller. I chuck things away.