The poets whom I knew then were all men and all seemed dauntingly sure of themselves - although I am sure that really they were as uncertain as I was.

Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn’t work, throw it away.

A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.

Finish the day's writing when you still want to continue.

The human longing for story is so powerful, so primitive, that it seems like something not learned, but locked into our genes.

i wish i was away in Ingo far across the briny sea sailing over deepest waters where neither care nore worry trouble me

I enjoy research; in fact research is so engaging that it would be easy to go on for years, and never write the novel at all.

It is a violation which has obsessed the tyrants of the twentieth century. They do not want simply to kill their opponents, but to liquidate them, to deny that they have ever existed.

However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned.

However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition.

Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear.

The intellect is the earth, the emotions are the sky and the spirit is the universe beyond.

Despite the myth that men are less committed, they are predisposed to desire marriage.

Adults are locked into car payments and divorces and work. They haven't got time to think fresh.

I think the older I've gotten the more, like most people, my appreciation shifts towards things that are very difficult, where you see people who have put in tremendous hours and hours of commitment.

Ye shall be those whose eyes ever seek for an enemy - for YOUR enemy. And with some of you there is hatred at first sight.

Don't confront me with my failures, I had not forgotten them.

I am very grateful for my life. I think one of the keys to not being depressed is to find gratitude and to be grateful for what you have. So I am grateful for what I have.

In the University library he wandered through the stacks, among the thousands of books, inhaling the musty odor of leather, cloth, and drying page as if it were an exotic incense.

I am an underwater explorer, not a treasure hunter.

I feel like the blues is actually some kind of documentary of the past and the present - and something to give people inspiration for the future.