When anyone escapes, my heart / leaps up. Even when it's I who am escaped from, / I am half on the side of the leaver.

It might be a bad thing, not to know what's going on in the world. I can't say I really approve of it.

Poets are like steam valves, where the ordinary feelings of ordinary people can escape and be shown.

I'm not sure that the benefit - as a writer and as a citizen - that I would get from reading at least the front page of the Times every day or every other day would outweigh the depression.

When I quit all these things and said I didn't have any time, I meant I didn't have any time.

Writing or making anything-a poem, a bird feeder, a chocolate cake-has self-respect in it. You're working. You're trying. You're not lying down on the ground, having given up.

Maybe we can use a metaphor for it, out of dance. I think for many years I was aware of the need, in dance and in life, to breathe deeply and to take in more air than we usually take in.