Each word bears its weight, so you have to read my poems quite slowly.

Blackbirds are the cellos of the deep farms.

The sea is as near as we come to another world.

A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.

I married a young Englishman in Cambridge in 1955 and have lived in Britain every since.

There's no friend like someone who has known you since you were five.

There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.

Poets should ignore most criticism and get on with making poetry.

Yes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions.

I like rhyme because it is memorable, I like form because having to work to a pattern gives me original ideas.

I am now seventy, rather glad, really, that I won't live to see the horrors to come in the 21st century.

Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently

The future will be better tomorrow.

It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.

All that stuff - 'teen idol' - that wasn't me.

Unless the cause of peace based on law gathers behind it the force and zeal of a religion, it hardly can hope to succeed.

It's with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.

I do watch 'American Idol' sometimes. It's not really that pleasurable... I take that back. It is the epitome of a guilty pleasure. Sometimes there's some good singers on that show.

If you could learn to make love, I could fire the chauffer.

If you see yourself as trying to beat the mountain, eventually the mountain will win. You don't conquer mountains, you cooperate with them.

Good mathematicians see analogies. Great mathematicians see analogies between analogies.