There is not built-in meaning to anything, we are free to add any meaning we choose to give it.

Poetry is language in orbit.

The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also.

The next move is always the test.

Once I was on the job, once I had got started, I felt safe enough, but the anticipation made me tense.

At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure.

I have begun to think of life as a series of ripples widening out from an original center.