And some poets are far better read off the page because they're very bad speakers. I'm thinking of one in particular whom I won't name, a good poet, and he reads in such a dry, boring way, your eyes start drooping.

But you'd have a job to find many of my poems which would seem to be very influenced by a particular person.

I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now.

A terrible thing about getting oldish is that your friends start dying, and in the last ten years I have lost seven or eight of my closest.

I just didn't want to shoot other people.

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

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