For me the form, the stanzaic shape, is an endorsement, proof that I'm engaged with the Latin or Greek at an original level, that my versions are explorations.

There's always a danger of writers believing their own publicity. We live in a world of puff and solicited blurb, a world of favours and backscratching.

I would insist that poetry is a normal human activity and its proper concern all the things that happen to people.

I suppose that as you grow older some sense of an accumulating oeuvre is unavoidable.

Every Monday morning I try to remember to say "Thank you, Lord. I'm not at the Senior Staff Meeting."

I think a philistine environment should be bracing for young artists. You have to make your own enjoyment, you've got to make your own art.

I was the first Arts Council official in the archipelago to do something for what you might call indigenous music.

A good poem is not completely a poem until it has received a critical response that grows out of the poem in an almost biological way.

Most poets' revisions are disastrous. They buckle and dent what was originally forged at a red-hot heat.

I work hard to make the poems as good as they can be, and if they're not good enough I scrap them. I find it difficult after a gap of a few years to tinker - I'm more likely to destroy.

I'm not the kind of poet who arranges treasure-hunts to please the academics and keep them busy. Poetry should be surprising in deeper ways.

You've just got to take a good hard look at yourself, change what needs to be changed, and move on.

Rights are not self-evident. They're not unalienable. They are subject to modification just like anything else.

Im pleased to say that in telling them, and especially my parents, they told me that they love me and they support me. And for young people out there, know that thats usually what the answer is.

It is a statistical fact that the wicked work harder to reach hell than the righteous do to enter heaven

A world in everlasting conflict between the new idea and the old allegiances, new arts and new inventions against the old establishment.

Art is born in attention.

I don't want to dig in the truth all of the time. Let me dream.

You want weapons? We're in a library! Books! The best weapons in the world!

The man who will be the future of the WWE. He will be right under me. He is the man, he is the myth, he is the legend, soon to be.. he is, Alex Riley.

Every novel begins with the speculative question, What if "X" happened? That's how you start.