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.

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.

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 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.

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.

The solution to encourage creativity is to maximize use of employee’ brainpower.

Sometimes, a word succeeds beyond the wildest dreams of its creators, like a virus sent into the world to infect common speech.

I did that Dior Couture 60th anniversary show in July. It took so long to get ready, I think I would have rather been watching.

We can often better help another by fanning a glimmer of goodness than by censuring his faults.

The Management of money is, in much, the management of self. If heaven allotted to each man seven guardian angels, five of them, at least, would be found night and day hovering over his pockets.

I have to have lemon and honey. I have to have apple cider vinegar, Braggs. And I have to have either Red Vines or Twizzlers. These things, you know, are the things that help my vocal performance.

If you believe you can only go so far, it is an obstacle.

The first prerequisite of an advanced being is a sense of humor.

Life is too small a container for certain individuals. Some of them, such as Alobar, huff and puff and try to expand the container. Others, such as Kudra, seek to pry the lid off and hop out.

All but blind In his chambered hole Gropes for worms The four-clawed Mole.