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" I was brought up on music hall, and at the same time, I was studying Greek at the age of 12. "

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" A lot of my activity in the theatre, and even in writing poems, was a kind of retrospective aggro on the English teacher who wouldn't allow me to read poetry aloud. "

" Honours seem to be the nature of British life. It's horrible. Maybe I'm mad, but the older I get, the less I want to have honours loaded on me. "

" I believe more in the power of drama than in the power of religion. "

" I need to look back on my poetic ventures, make sense of them as a whole, and move forward... and to experiment without external demands. "

" The imagination has its limits, and you have to face up to that. "

" I think it's the tendency to want to create gods and monotheistic absolutes and absolute certainties that is the continual temptation in human thought - that's the great danger. Every time we create a god, we diminish humanity. "

" I spent a lot of time on recce. It is a kind of creative chaos, but I like the sense of creative serendipity. "

" I'd rather climb Everest than go for a walk in the park. "

" I often find myself quoting from Victor Hugo after one of my theatrical ventures. 'Now that my play is a failure,' he once said, 'I find I love it all the more.' I first quoted that after 'Square Rounds' at the Olivier in 1992. "

" I hate everything about writing except doing it. "

" Of course you have to provide for the vulnerable and the children, but also, the vulnerable and the children need art in some form or another. You need spiritual experiences that, I think, forms of art give best. "

" I love being on the road with others, with a camera, but also being alone writing poetry. "

" I hate being called poet/dramatist/translator/director. 'Poet' covers it all for me. "

" I was well read and knew languages, but I didn't want to become Ezra Pound. I wanted to write poetry that people like my parents might respond to. "

" There's a kind of despair about whether art can really do anything, but you have to incorporate that despair into the way you work. I try to soak my work in my sense of futility and fury. "

" One of the important things about familiar form and metricality is that it draws attention to the physical nature of language: the spell-binding nature of it and the ceremony of articulation. "

" Theatre has to be theatrical. It has to draw attention to itself, like poetry. "

" It is always better to write for the whole of society than for the poetry-reading public. "

" I really admire the great Japanese artists who could change their name three times in a lifetime. You could get rid of one and renew yourself. "

" You litter poems with too much learning when you're younger. "

" I am capable of bad taste - deliberately. "

" I hate the anglicanisation of culture, the idea that culture is genteel. It's not genteel. "

" Statues are one of the ways I try to test the traditions of European culture against the most modern destructive forces. I often make a point of seeking them out and have used them as mouthpieces in my film poetry, as with Heinrich Heine in 'The Gaze of the Gorgon.' "

" I've written on public matters, but I don't understand how anyone could tout me as a possible poet laureate when I wrote a poem on the abdication of King Charles III or about the sex life of the Royals... anybody who knew my work would know I'm not a contender. "

" I have always loved radio as a medium. "

" A poem, once it's written, is meant to be read with the inner voice of the person who reads it. "

" The Greek tragic mask is one of my main metaphors for the role of the poet. The eyes of the tragic mask are always open to witness even the worst, and the mouth is always open to make poetry from it. Neither ever close. "

" Why shouldn't poetry address what happened yesterday and be published in the newspaper? "

" The ear will surrender even at those times when the eye wants to close, when the eye doesn't want to watch. "

" Yes, I've got inwardness and tenderness, but I also get angry and vituperative, and you have to honour that as well. "