There is probably a perverse pride in my administration... that we were going to do the right thing even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who's occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can't be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion.

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow next week next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.

If you are going to sin sin against God not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't.

The older I've got the less I find myself going back and re-reading or really reading new fiction or poetry.

I don't look on poetry as closed works. I feel they're going on all the time in my head and I occasionally snip off a length.

I was kind of an outcast in school 'cause I always kept to myself and was writing poetry and then going on tour with my brother band all the time so kids didn't know what to make of me.

I think that the job of poetry its political job is to refresh the idea of justice which is going dead in us all the time.

Well if this is poetry I'm certainly never going to write any myself.

If you were going to choose a way of making your way in this world and a place to start from you might not choose poetry and you might not choose Huddersfield.

I think there's no excuse for the American poetry reader not knowing a good deal about what is going on in the rest of the world.

I think that concrete poetry seems to have as far as I can see come to a kind of a dead end. It doesn't seem to be going any further than it went in its high period of about five or six years ago.

Concrete poets continue to turn out beautiful things but to me they're more visual than oral and they almost really belong on the wall rather than in a book. I haven't the least idea of where poetry is going.

When I hit a block regardless of what I am writing what the subject matter is or what's going on in the plot I go back and I read Pablo Neruda's poetry. I don't actually speak Spanish so I read it translation. But I always go back to Neruda. I don't know why but it calms me calms my brain.

Meet some people who care about poetry the way you do. You'll have that readership. Keep going until you know you're doing work that's worthy. And then see what happens. That's my advice.

The irony is going to work every day became the subject of probably my best poetry.

I work on words mostly toward them being poetry or short stories and then some of those become songs. They all find their place in the world but they all start off in the same place. I'm always painting and drawing as well and it's an ongoing creative assignment.