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.

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.

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.

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.

Those who lack courage, can’t be kind for kindness is a state of courage.

I do not see any reason why they should not be given the means to give their teachers just as high an education as is secured by attendance at the Protestant schools.

There's a certain line between jokes and music and poetry that's a bit blurred in my mind.

Songwriters always reminded me of that kid at school who would go around with his guitar, like, "Yeah, songwritin' man," looking wistful. That wasn't me - those kinds of people put me off.

There's a tendency, especially among revolutionaries, to only show the good side of yourself and then when you come to power, the bad side comes out.

I swear by swadeshi as it affords occasion for ample exercise of all our faculties and it tests every one of the millions of men and women, young and old.

If Russell Wilson wins this game... He starts to creep into the conversation of how we talk about Tom Brady, how we talk about Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, and Aaron Rodgers.

Lovers know what they want, but not what they need.

If you take an Oriental person and spin him around several times, does he become disoriented?

Accomplishments of children shine most brightly in the light of a parent's sincere praise.