I shall also take you forth and carve our names together in a yew tree, haloed with stars.

Show him every dawn & read to him endlessly.

What’s writing really about? It’s about trying to take fuller possession of the reality of your life.

The real mystery is this strange need. Why can't we just hide it and shut up? Why do we have to blab? Why do human beings need to confess?

The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff. How far had he walked? Nobody knows. Where did he come from? Nobody knows. How was he made? Nobody knows. Taller than a house the Iron Man stood at the top of the cliff, at the very brink, in the darkness.

I think it was Milosz, the Polish poet, who when he lay in a doorway and watched the bullets lifting the cobbles out of the street beside him realised that most poetry is not equipped for life in a world where people actually die. But some is.

The Bush administration doesn't particularly like public participation. It makes them look bad.