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.

Some socks are loners They can't live in pairs.

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?'

I have a theory that if you've got the kind of parents who want to send you to boarding school, you're probably better off at boarding school.

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.

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.

I was single for a long time and felt very much alone in the world, and talk of family values upset me very much at that phase in my life, because I used to think: 'What about people like me?

I think it's a question which particularly arises over women writers: whether it's better to have a happy life or a good supply of tragic plots.

Education is a system of imposed ignorance.

I was so blinded by her talent that I didn't recognize the tremendous pain behind her work. She gave me hundreds of images, so many chances to see that she was in trouble. I failed her.

The only journey is the one within.

As far as dude running the ball, or running with the ball, and somebody hit you helmet to helmet, I think you got an opportunity to go down. You got an opportunity to slide.

I am tough. Sometimes I'm unreasonable. I have to catch myself every once in a while.

It is how you show up at the showdown that counts.

If you respect people, and you pay them well, they will do anything for you

To cure worry, spend fifteen minutes daily filling your mind full of God. Worry is just a very bad mental habit. You can change any habit with God's help.

We humans should never forget our capacity to connect with the collective spirit of animals. Their energy is essential to our future growth.

There is no psychology; there is only biography and autobiography.