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.

I used to fish the Border rivers, but nowadays you have to queue up for a shot and I can't stand that.

And it's impossible for me to read Henry James.

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.

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

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

When I was a teacher, teachers would come into my classroom and admire my desk on which lay nothing whatever, whereas theirs were heaped with papers and books.