Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.

I'd like to think...that people in pubs would talk about my poems

I wouldn't mind seeing China if I could come back the same day.

If you tell a novelist, 'Life's not like that', he has to do something about it. The poet simply replies, 'No, but I am.'

Saki says that youth is like hors d'oeuvres: you are so busy thinking of the next courses you don't notice it. When you've had them, you wish you'd had more hors d'oeuvres.

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.

I think we got much better poetry when it was all regarded as sinful or subversive, and you had to hide it under the cushion when somebody came in.