Well, I love fishing. I wouldn't kill a fly myself but I've no hesitation in killing a fish. A lot of men are like that. No bother. Out you come. Thu….

I'm very gregarious, but I love being in the hills on my own..

If I wrote a play with four characters every single one of them would talk like me regardless of age or sex..

All I write about is what's happened to me and to people I know, and the better I know them, the more likely they are to be written about..

Well, I'm a light traveller. I chuck things away..

And some poets are far better read off the page because they're very bad speakers. I'm thinking of one in particular whom I won't name, a good poet, ….

I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry..

I used to have a great love for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, the big boys of the last century..

Landscape is my religion. ...God in a green legend, I lean over the pool In a testament of leaves. I dangle my twinkling mood Before me in a cool cav….

When I talk of hearing a poet's voice speaking, I always think of it as in the presence of the man..

In some ways I'm a reticent man, and for quite a number of years there wasn't very much of my real true deep feelings in my writing..

But you'd have a job to find many of my poems which would seem to be very influenced by a particular person..

People haven't got the interest in long long works these days. A lack of interest which I share..

I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I'd throw them out..

All those authors there, most of whom of course I've never met. That's the poetry side, that's the prose side, that's the fishing and miscellaneous b….

I said I have no powers of invention. Well, I also have no powers of mimicry..

In fact a lot of them I think are absolute baloney. Those Charles Olsens and people like that. At first I was interested in seeing what they were up ….

When I go fishing I like to know that there's nobody within five miles of me..

It's like breathing in and out to me. It's like having a conversation with someone who isn't there. Because it has to be addressed to somebody - not ….

But I hang on to books. I love them. I even think they're very nice decor in a room - far better than paintings... That's not quite true!.

I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now..