September twenty-second, Sir, the bough cracks with unpicked apples, and at dawn the small-mouth bass breaks water, gorged with spawn.

If youth is a defect, it is one we outgrow too soon.

In the end, there is no end.

We feel the machine slipping from our hands As if someone else were steering; If we see light at the end of the tunnel, It's the light of the oncoming train.

The world is absolutely out of control now and is not going to be saved by any reason or unreason.

Poetry is not the record of an event: it is an event.

Their monument sticks like a fishbone in the city's throat.

It is night, And it is vanity, and age Blackens the heart of Adam. Fear, The yellow chirper, beaks its cage.

History has to live with what was here, clutching and close to fumbling all we had - it is so dull and gruesome how we die, unlike writing, life never finishes.

Most poetry is very formal, but when a modern poet is formal he gets more attention for it than old poets did.

I was overcome with an attack of pathological enthusiasm.

I'm probably 20 percent atheist and 80 percent agnostic. I don't think anyone really knows. You'll either find out or not when you get there, until then there's no point thinking about it.

The power of the writer is to capture the thoughts live and present them as they appeared in his mind

To win, you must have both talent an desire- but desire first.

Women aren't mean the way that men are. They're full of life and they're like God in that way.

The galleries are simply corporations in the art world - "Here's a million dollars for this latest piece of crap" - but I'm not about to go along with the gallery system.

People only know what they see on TV.

The Devil ... is much better served by exploiting our virtues than by appealing to our lower passions; consequently, it is when the Devil looks most noble and reasonable that he is most dangerous.

What do I like about Spurs? The flairness

I'll do what little I can in writing. Only it will be very little. I'm not capable of it; and if I were, you would not go near it at all. For if you did, you would hardly bear to live