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.

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.

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

It's like breathing in and out to me. It's like having a conversation with someone who isn't there. Because it has to be addressed to somebody - not a particular person, or very rarely.

When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous.

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

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