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

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

" 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. "

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

" I have always loved radio as a medium. "

" I think that, as you get older, you want to be freer rather than more bound. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" Coming from a very inarticulate family made me try to speak for those who can't express themselves and created a need for articulation at its most ceremonial - poetry. "

" I'm not the sort of person who reads much about himself. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" It's been an obsession with me from childhood, the horrors of the twentieth century. "

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

" I think poems belong as much in the news pages as the literary pages. A lot of people throw aside the literary pages! Whereas everybody looks at the news section. "

" I've realised darkness and light are inter-dependent, just as death is an enhancer of life. "

" 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 get early inoculation against the idea of success if you're a poet. When I published my first collection of sonnets, I sold about five copies; now kids study them for A level. Wanting to be successful in that other world of money or fame is not interesting. Poetry isn't like that, and it never has been. "

" 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. "

" I like a direct relationship between actor and audience. "

" I'm hoping to have a ninth decade like Matisse's. "

" I am capable of bad taste - deliberately. "

" Poetry is all I write, whether for books or readings or for the National Theatre or for the opera house and concert hall or even for TV. "

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