I did know Ted Hughes and I partly wrote the book to explain to myself and others the complexities of a marriage that was for six years wonderfully productive of poetry and then ended in tragedy.

Peter Lucas and I live in Durham but spend a great of time in North Wales, where we have a cottage in the mountains, and in Vermont, USA, with my sister - who is a children's writer married to a poet.

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

I work very hard on all my poems, but most of the work consists of trying not to sound as if I had worked. I try to make them sound as natural as possible, but within a quite strict form, which to my ears has a lot to do with musical rhythm and sound.

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

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

I did know Ted Hughes and I partly wrote the book to explain to myself and others the complexities of a marriage that was for six years wonderfully productive of poetry and then ended in tragedy.

My earlier poems were sadder than my poems are today, perhaps because I wrote them in confusion or when I was unhappy. But I am not a melancholy person, quite the contrary, no one enjoys laughing more than I do.

I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature.

I dislike literary jargon and never use it. Criticism has only one function and that is to help readers read and understand literature. It is not a science, it is an aid to art.

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

When everything is for 'fun' nothing is for the good.

I write, or used to write, to explain to myself situations I couldn't otherwise solve or understand. Meditation comes very naturally to me.

Sylvia Plath was just a month and a half older than I, and when she committed suicide I was only 30 - and very shocked and sorry. I never knew her personally.

Blake has always been a favorite, the lyrics, not so much the prophetic books, but I suppose Yeats influenced me more as a young poet, and the American, Robert Frost.

I think a poet, like a painter, should be a craftsperson.

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

I have always made my own rules, in poetry as in life - though I have tried of late to cooperate more with my family. I do, however, believe that without order or pattern poetry is useless.

I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were.

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.

I'm not really quiet or shy. Ask any of my friends! But I always ground my poetry in life itself. Poetry is an art of language, though, so I am always aware of every word's meaning, or multiple meanings.

I play with language a great deal in my poems, and I enjoy that. I try to condense language, that is, I try to express complicated but I hope real emotions as simply as possible. But that doesn't mean the poems are simple, just that they are as truthful as I can make them.

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

Have you ever heard of a pianist who never had to practice - or of an architect who didn't bother to find out why buildings stand up?

Many varieties of sonnet, of course, have been written over the ages.

Writing in a strict form can surprise you.

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

Let me first state that I believe that marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman.

I don't know of many evangelicals who want to deny gay couples their legal rights. However, most of us don't want to call it marriage, because we think that word has religious connotations, and we're not ready to see it used in ways that offend us.

The media seems to think only abortion and gay marriage are religious issues. Poverty is a moral issue, it's a faith issue, it's a religious issue.

Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it.

I don't think that a same-sex marriage is the way God intended it to be.

A good businessman never makes a contract unless he's sure he can carry it through, yet every fool on earth is perfectly willing to sign a marriage contract without considering whether he can live up to it or not.

After 14 years, it better be a real marriage, you know? We do have a great time together. We are really lucky.

Marriage encourages the men and women who together create life to unite in a bond for the protection of children.

A marriage is no amusement but a solemn act, and generally a sad one.

There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them.

A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song.

Marriage is the miracle that transforms a kiss from a pleasure into a duty.

Love is more pleasant than marriage for the same reason that novels are more amusing than history.

I was against gay marriage until I realized I didn't have to get one.

The most important thing for a good marriage is to learn how to argue peaceably.

Marriage is like wine. It is not be properly judged until the second glass.

Love in marriage should be the accomplishment of a beautiful dream, and not, as it too often is, the end.

I do not support a constitutional amendment to prohibit gay marriage.

Before marriage, a man declares that he would lay down his life to serve you; after marriage, he won't even lay down his newspaper to talk to you.

Women today have more of an overview of their lives and how marriage is or is not a part of it.

I decided he'd changed so much that a whole new book was required and that book actually I can say so was the first to say that the marriage was in trouble and the Prince didn't like at all and my book was being serialized in the Sunday Times over five weeks.