However, I learned something. I thought that if the young person, the student, has poetry in him or her, to offer them help is like offering a propeller to a bird.

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

But I hang on to books. I love them. I even think they're very nice decor in a room - far better than paintings... That's not quite true!

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.

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

When I talk of hearing a poet's voice speaking, I always think of it as in the presence of the man.