It is a terrible thing to be so open: it is as if my heart put on a face and walked into the world.

England offers new comforts. I could write a novel there.

I like people too much or not at all. I've got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them.

Do I like to write? Why? About what? Will I give up and say, "Living and feeding a man's insatiable guts and begetting children occupies my whole life. Don't have time to write"?

Let me live, love and say it well in good sentences.

God, is this all it is, the ricocheting down the corridor of laughter and tears? Of self-worship and self-loathing? Of glory and disgust?

Poetry, I feel, is a tyrannical discipline, you've got to go so far, so fast, in such a small space that you've just got to turn away all the peripherals.