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.'

I don't think I write well - just better than anyone else.

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left, / Shaped to the comfort of the last to go / As if to win them back

They say eyes clear with age.

We should be careful / Of each other, we should be kind / While there is still time.

You have to distinguish between things that seemed odd when they were new but are now quite familiar, such as Ibsen and Wagner, and things that seemed crazy when they were new and seem crazy now, like 'Finnegans Wake' and Picasso.

Here silence stands Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken, Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken, Luminously-peopled air ascends; And past the poppies bluish neutral distance Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence: Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.