Barry Kent's father looks like a big ape and has got more hair on the back of his hands than my father has got on his entire head.

Will you lie to me and promise to read them? Books need to be read. The pages need to be turned.

I never imagined when I began writing in the early 1960s I'd become professional and my life would be transformed.

Yes - I am usually overweight. I have had to be interested in diet because of being diabetic for 30 years and having kidney failure.

I have decided to be a poet. My father said there isn't a suitable career structure for poets and no pensions and other boring things, but I am quite decided.

8.45 a.m. My mother is in the hospital grounds smoking a cigarette. She is looking old and haggard. All the debauchery is catching up with her.

She liked people. Me, I can take them or leave them, but mostly leave them.