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

And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so.

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

I just didn't want to shoot other people.

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

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.