I don't care whether a book is a first edition or not. I'm not a bibliophile in that word's natural sense..

I learned words, I learned words; but half of them died from lack of exercise. And the ones I use often look at me with a look that whispers, Liar..

And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so..

And in a way, that's been a help to me, because I take great passions for a particular poet - sometimes it lasts for many years, sometimes only for a….

However, I learned something. I thought that if the young person, the student, has poetry in him or her, to offer them help is like offering a propel….

I used to fish the Border rivers, but nowadays you have to queue up for a shot and I can't stand that..

There are some friends you don't meet for twenty years and when you meet them again it's as if no twenty years has happened - you're lucky when that ….

Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood..

When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous..

I just didn't want to shoot other people..

And it's impossible for me to read Henry James..

I don't think of myself all the time..

When I was a teacher, teachers would come into my classroom and admire my desk on which lay nothing whatever, whereas theirs were heaped with papers ….

A terrible thing about getting oldish is that your friends start dying, and in the last ten years I have lost seven or eight of my closest..