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.

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'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.

If I invite God into my life, I am and always will be good enough.

I've had a very positive experience in L.A. in the comedy world and found everyone to be very nice and welcoming. It's been really fun.

Do unto others as you would have them do to you, said the rapist.

Even though I have so many things to figure out, I'm very much at peace. I don't feel like I'm closing the chapter on this phase of life - I feel like I'm closing the book and starting a new one.

Christianity in its true sense puts an end to the State. It was so understood from its very beginning, and for that Christ was crucified.

Balance is the natural state of life, because the basic characteristic of the fundamental element of life, pure consciousness, is complete balance.

The stress of an action diminishes rapidly after that action is performed.

Gromit was the name of a cat. When I started modeling the cat I just didn't feel it was quite right, so I made it into a dog because he could have a bigger nose and bigger, longer legs.

When we allow ourselves to become vulnerable, to take chances, and to risk our pride, that is when we find our own glory.

An active investor is someone who actually lives off their investments as opposed to wages from a job.