I think the whole emphasis in England, in universities, on practical criticism (but not that so much as on historical criticism, knowing what period a line comes from) this is almost paralysing. In America, in University, we read - what? - T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Yeats, that is where we began. Shakespeare flaunted in the background. I'm not sure I agree with this, but I think that' for the young poet, the writing poet, it is not quite so frightening to go to university in America as it is in England, for these reasons.

I want to kill myself, to escape from responsiblity, to crawl abjectly back into the womb.

I thought how strange it had never occurred to me before that I was only purely happy until I was nine years old.

Tomorrow is another day toward death.

The thing about writing is not to talk, but to do it; no matter how bad or even mediocre it is, the process and production is the thing, not the sitting and theorizing about how one should write ideally, or how well one could write if one really wanted to or had the time.

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.

There was a beautiful time.