If you look a word up in the dictionary and twenty minutes later you're still wandering around in the dictionary, you probably have the most basic equipment you need to be a poet.

One of the ridiculous aspects of being a poet is the huge gulf between how seriously we take ourselves and how generally we are ignored by everybody else.

A motto I've adopted is, if at first you don't succeed, hide all evidence that you ever tried.

The mind can be trained to relieve itself on paper.

Poetry is like standing on the edge of a lake on a moonlit night and the light of the moon is always pointing straight at you.

Nationalism is a type of insanity in which the boundaries of a land replace God.

In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.

Write the poem only you can write.

But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow.

But tonight, the lion of contentment has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest.

While the novelist is banging on his typewriter, the poet is watching a fly in the windowpane.

People are rarely what they first appear—good, bad, or otherwise.

A library is thought in cold storage.

Communism is like one big phone company.

I firmly believe that intuitive or symbolic sight is not a gift but a skill - a skill based in self-esteem.

As a fiction writer, one of things you learn is God lives in specificity. You know, human kindness is increased as we pursue specificity.

The realistic way to reduce the amount of money in politics is to reduce the amount of politics in money -- the importance of government in allocating wealth and opportunity.

There is no calamity greater than lavish desires. There is no greater guilt than discontent. And there is no greater disaster than greed.

I reckon I closed down at least two films companies, one of which was in Ealing in the mid 1950s.

I never want to be in a position where I have to defend my material. It's too subjective. It's for other people to defend or not defend.

Simply wait upon Him. So doing, we shall be directed, supplied, protected, corrected, and rewarded.