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

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 happens. I feel the same about books.

Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood.

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.

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

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

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 behind me. You get an affection for books that you've enjoyed.

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, and he reads in such a dry, boring way, your eyes start drooping.

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

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

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!

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 to, what they were doing, why they were doing it. They never moved me in the way that one is moved by true poetry.

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

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

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 while. This happens to everybody.

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

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

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

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 a particular person, or very rarely.

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

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 and books.

And if they haven't got poetry in them, there's nothing you can do that will produce it.

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 propeller to a bird.

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.

I don't think of myself all the time.

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. Thump. And that's not the only reason.

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

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

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

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

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

I find it's impossible for me to read Proust.

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

But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.

I grew up with art from the innocent age of ten - with art, but with no sense of identity.

Death comes not to the living soul, nor age to the loving heart.

I'm very pleased to be here. Let's face it, at my age I'm very pleased to be anywhere.

For example, UNICEF works with governments to change legislation such as in India where a law was passed raising the age of compulsory school completion to keep children in school and away from the workplace for longer.

I figured out it was a social thing, what women were allowed to do. At a very young age, I decided I was not going to follow women's rules.

I wish I knew at 14 not to put much thought into what other people my age said to me, cause we were all looking for the answers. So I wish I knew that other people really don't know any more than you do!

I believe very firmly that gay people of every stripe and age should be role models for all children, and that means interacting with them.

Donner likes what he does and enjoys being on a set. He doesn't have to do it, its not like he has to make the rent. When I get to be his age and still enjoy what I'm doing like him, I'd be lucky.

Does age matter? Time doesn't matter.

I realised from a very early age that God gave me a gift, and that gift was to run, and I wanted to use it to the best of my ability.

Looking back, I think we were all quite mature, surprisingly responsible. In earlier wars, boys of our age had just gone off to raise hell or enlist or both, but we stayed dutifully at our desks doing tomorrow's homework.

This is the patent age of new inventions for killing bodies, and for saving souls. All propagated with the best intentions.

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.

For me, having a child is a really great responsibility because you've got something there that is depending on you for information and love until a certain age when it goes to school.