There's no friend like someone who has known you since you were five.

Each word bears its weight, so you have to read my poems quite slowly.

Blackbirds are the cellos of the deep farms.

The sea is as near as we come to another world.

A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.

I married a young Englishman in Cambridge in 1955 and have lived in Britain every since.

There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.

Poets should ignore most criticism and get on with making poetry.

Yes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions.

I like rhyme because it is memorable, I like form because having to work to a pattern gives me original ideas.

I am now seventy, rather glad, really, that I won't live to see the horrors to come in the 21st century.

Even now, there are still days so beautiful, I almost believe in God.

Money promises more than it delivers

Forget the dream. Stay real.

Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.

I know my limitations. I know I'm not perfect. I know what I know, but more importantly, I know what I don't know. When I don't know something, I surround myself with people I can trust to teach me.

I worked in fashion for ten years, and like anyone in the fashion industry, even if you leave, you never leave fashion behind.

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

The West pays money and piles up pressure to cause a strife between Islamic countries so that Muslims would kill each other and the West can obtain its desirable outcome thereby.

The law of floatation was not discovered by contemplating the sinking of things, but by contemplating the floating of things which floated naturally, and then intelligently asking why they did so.