Empty-page staring again tonight. It's maddening. I suppose people who don't write (like the Connollies) imagine anything that can be though can be expressed. Well, I don't know. I can't do it. It's this sort of thing that makes me belittle the whole business: what's the good of a 'talent' if you can't do it when you want to? What should we think of a woodcarver who couldn't woodcarver? or a pianist who couldn't play the piano? Bah, likewise grrr.

I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.

Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don't have any kids yourself.

life is first boredom, then fear.whether or not we use it, it goes,and leaves what something hidden from us chose,and age, and then the only end of age.

What are days for?Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over.They are to be happy in: Where can we live but days?Ah, solving that questionBrings the priest and the doctor In their long coatsRunning over the fields.

I have wished you something None of the others would....

Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.

One of the great criticisms of poets of the past is that they said one thing and did another.

Novels are about other people and poems are about yourself