I like buying clothes, especially as I get a tax-deductible allowance.

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.

In my case, the long gaps between my books have got quite a lot to do with lack of confidence. A lot of the time when I'm not writing I start thinking I can't do it.

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

Bloody Christmas, here again, let us raise a loving cup, peace on earth, goodwill to men, and make them do the washing up.

When a poem doesn't work, the first question to ask yourself is, 'Am I telling the truth?'

The interesting thing is that you don't often meet a poet who doesn't have a sense of humour, and some of them do keep it out of their poems because they're afraid of being seen as light versifiers.