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

The progress of any writer is marked by those moments when he manages to outwit his own inner police system.

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?

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.

Where white is black and black is white, I won.

Show him every dawn & read to him endlessly.

Applause is the beginning of abuse