When I go fishing I like to know that there's nobody within five miles of me.

There are some friends you don't meet for twenty years and when you meet them again it's as if no twenty years has happened - you're lucky when that happens. I feel the same about books.

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

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.

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

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.

Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood.