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

Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood.

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.

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.

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

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

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