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

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

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

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

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

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