Each sudden gust of light explains itself as flames, but neither they, nor even bombs redoubled on the hills tonight can quite include me in their fear.

I don't want my poems to be sentimental, though I do acknowledge that sentiment is probably rather under-reported in a lot of people's feelings a lot of the time.

Poems are a hotline to our hearts, and we forget this emotional power at our peril

But Wordsworth is the poet I admire above all others.

I am a vigilant monarchist. I want to see things evolve. The direction the monarchy seems to be moving in - towards a more mainland-European model - is one I would feel sympathetic about.

Honor the miraculousness of the ordinary.

I write between 5.30am and 9.00. That way, I hope I carry over something from my dream time.

I like eating out. I like buying beautiful paintings and being surrounded by beautiful things. I have to finance that life. I can barely afford a pension scheme because I don't make enough money.

I'm ensuring my place in heaven.

Like a lot of people, for a long time I thought that the road to hell is paved with bad sequels.

But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and do, do both.

His failure became my destiny

I've been playing these schoolgirl roles in all my movies. Every time I went to the set, it felt like I was going to school.

Marriage is not common in Sweden.

May you live as long as you are fit to live, but no longer, or, may you rather die before you cease to be fit to live than after!

A fast to be true must be accompanied by a readiness to receive pure thoughts and determination to resist all Satan's temptations.

Glamour is a shooting star, it catches your eye, but fades away, beauty is the sun always brilliant day after day.

Medicine to produce health must examine disease; and music, to create harmony must investigate discord.

He who worries about calamities suffers them twice over.

May God grant us the wisdom to discover right, the will to choose it, and the strength to make it endure.

Possibly the greatest waste in life is the gap between what you are and what you could become.