I used to have a great love for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, the big boys of the last century.

All I write about is what's happened to me and to people I know, and the better I know them, the more likely they are to be written about.

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

People haven't got the interest in long long works these days. A lack of interest which I share.

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.

And in a way, that's been a help to me, because I take great passions for a particular poet - sometimes it lasts for many years, sometimes only for a while. This happens to everybody.

Well, I love fishing. I wouldn't kill a fly myself but I've no hesitation in killing a fish. A lot of men are like that. No bother. Out you come. Thump. And that's not the only reason.