I just didn't want to shoot other people.

I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry.

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.

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

And some poets are far better read off the page because they're very bad speakers. I'm thinking of one in particular whom I won't name, a good poet, and he reads in such a dry, boring way, your eyes start drooping.

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.

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