I always tell students that writing a poem and publishing it are two quite separate things, and you should write what you have to write, and if you're afraid it's going to upset someone, don't publish it.

Write to amuse? What an appalling suggestion! I write to make people anxious and miserable and to worsen their indigestion.

Bloody men are like bloody buses - you wait for about a year and as soon as one approaches your stop two or three others appear.

I've said what I'm prepared to say in my poems, and then journalists think that you're going to tell them a whole lot more.

I've never been more famous than I was, suddenly, in 1986.

On Waterloo Bridge where we said our goodbyes, the weather conditions bring tears to my eyes. I wipe them away with a black woolly glove And try not to notice I've fallen in love On Waterloo Bridge I am trying to think: This is nothing. you're high on the charm and the drink. But the juke-box inside me is playing a song That says something different. And when was it wrong? On Waterloo Bridge with the wind in my hair I am tempted to skip. You're a fool. I don't care. the head does its best but the heart is the boss- I admit it before I am halfway across

The reason modern poetry is difficult is so that the poet's wife cannot understand it.