Queen Victoria - a mixture of national landlady and actress.

The Canadian spirit is cautious, observant and critical where the American is assertive.

It's all in the art. You get no credit for living.

Criticism changes with the fashion of the time. A story is always a story.

Now, practically all reviewers have academic aspirations. The people from the universities are used to a captive audience, but the literary journalist has to please his audience.

It is the role of the poet to look at what is happening in the world and to know that quite other things are happening.

All writers - all people - have their stores of private and family legends which lie like a collection of half-forgotten, often violent toys on the floor of memory.