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" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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! "

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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