I listen to money singing, it's like looking down from long French windows at a provincial town. The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad in the evening sun. It is intensely sad.

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

I am not sure, once a poet has found out what has been written already, and how it was written - once, in short, he has learnt his trade - that he should bother with literature at all. Poetry is not like surgery, a technique that can be copied. Every operation the poet performs is unique, and need never be done again.

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

And immediately Rather than words comes the thought of high windows: The sun-comprehending glass, And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

I feel the only thing you can do about life is to preserve it, by art if you're an artist, by children if you're not.

Above all, though, children are linked to adults by the simple fact that they are in process of turning into them. For this they may be forgiven much. Children are bound to be inferior to adults, or there is no incentive to grow up.