"It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down. It is not the houses. It is the spaces between the houses. It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer exist."

"Poetry is not a metrical exercise."

"Poetry carries its history within it, and it is oral in its origins, its transmission was oral."

"As poets we do not ask permission before we begin to practise, for there is no authority to license us. We do not inquire whether it is still possible to pen a drama, for the answer to that question is ours alone to give. It is our drama, spoken or sung, that asserts our right to the title of poet. It is our decision that counts, and not the opinion of some theatre management, or the ponderings of the critic, or even the advice of our friendliest mentors."

"My sonnet asserts that the sonnet still lives. My epic, should such fortune befall me, asserts that the heroic narrative is not lost — that it is born again."

"The composer does not want the self-sufficiency of a richly complex text: he or she wants to feel that the text is something in need of musical setting."

"Bloody men are like bloody buses - You wait for about a year And as soon as one approaches your stop Two or three others appear."

"My party piece: I strike, then from the moment when the matchstick conjures up its light, to when the brightness moves beyond its means, and dies, I say the story of my life"

"Lifetimes went past. With the critical mass of hardly more than the thought of a thought I kept on, headlong, to vanishing point. I looked for an end, for some dimension to hold hard and resist. But I still exist."

"Boy with the name and face I don't remember, you can stop shouting now, I can still hear you."

"In a life, most of us turn no more than 45 degrees. Not much compared to those who turn full-circle in the slighest breeze or those who totally uncoil, but enough in the end to tell a bag of diamonds from a sack of coal."

"Think, two things on their own and both at once."

"Right here you made an angel of yourself, free-falling backwards into last night's snow, indenting a straight, neat, crucified shape, then flapping your arms, one stroke, a great bird, to leave the impression of wings. It worked."

"That heart had been an apple once, they reckoned. Green. They had a scheme to plant an apple there again beginning with a pip, but he rejected it."

"Mother, any distance greater than a single span requires a second pair of hands."

"Ignite the flares, connect the phones, wind all the clocks; the sun goes rusty like a medal in its box - collect it from the loft. Peg out the stars, replace the bulbs of Jupiter and Mars. A man like that takes something with him when he dies, but he has wept the coins that rested on his eyes, eased out the stopper from the mouthpiece of the cave, exhumed his own white body from the grave."

"I've made out a will: I'm leaving myself to the National Health. I'm sure they can use the jellies and tubes and syrups and glues..."

"Here's how they rated him when the looked back: sometimes he did this, sometimes he did that."

"Where does the hand become the wrist? where does the neck become the shoulder? The watershed and then the weight, whatever turns up and tips us over that razor's edge between something and nothing, between one and the other."

"We walk to the ward from the badly parked car with your grandma taking four short steps to our two. We have brought her here to die and we know it."

"All land lines are down. Reports of mobile phones are false. One half-excoriated Apple Mac still quotes the Dow Jones."

"it says NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS but it don't say why."

"There's the moon trying to look romantic Moon's too old that's her trouble Aren't we all?"

"Tonight at noon Supermarkets will advertise 3d EXTRA on everything"

"You will tell me you love me Tonight at noon."

"This is the morning that we burnt a cardboard hat"

"Well I woke up this mornin' it was Christmas Day And the birds were singing the night away I saw my stocking lying on the chair Looked right to the bottom but you weren't there"

"Love is feeling cold in the back of vans Love is a fanclub with only two fans"

"Without you ghost ferries would cross the Mersey manned by skeleton crews"

"Prostitutes in the snow in Canning Street like strange erotic snowmen"

"The daughters of Albion taking the dawn ferry to tomorrow worrying about what happened worrying about what hasn't happened lacing up blue sneakers over brown ankles fastening up brown stockings to blue suspenderbelts"

"GUIN GUINN GUINNESS IS white bird lying unnoticed in a corner splattered feathers blood running merged with the neonsigns in a puddle GUINNESS IS GOOD GUINNESS IS GOOD FOR Masks Masks Masks Masks Masks GUINNESS IS GOOD FOR YOU"

"Wasn't a bad party really Except for the people"

"The general at the radar screen Rubbed his hands with glee, And grinning pressed the button And started world war three."

"The general at the radar screen he should have got the sack But that wouldn't bring Three thousand million, seven hundred, and sixty-eight people back, Would it?"

"When the busstopped suddenly to avoid damaging a mother and child in the road, the younglady in the greenhat sitting opposite was thrown across me, and not being one to miss an opportunity i started to makelove"

"… i stood up and said it was a pity that the world didn't nearly end every lunchtime and that we could always pretend. …"

"When you are posthumous it is cold and dark and that is why patriots are a bit nuts in the head"

"he thinks about his journey nearly done. One day he'll clock on and never clock off or clock off and never clock on"

"there is a mushroom cloud in the back garden i did i tried to bring in the cat but it simply came to pieces in my hand i did i tried to whitewash the windows but there weren't any"

"No se puede vivir sin amar."

"Christ," he remarked, puzzled, "this is a dingy way to die."

"What for you lie?" the Chief of Rostrums repeated in a glowering voice. "You say your name is Black. No es Black." He shoved him backwards toward the door. "You say you are a wrider." He shoved him again. "You no are a wrider." He pushed the Consul more violently, but the Consul stood his ground. "You are no a de wrider, you are de espider, and we shoota de espiders in Méjico."

"How alike are the groans of love, to those of the dying."

"I wake to a darkness in which I must follow myself endlessly, hating the I who so eternally pursues and confronts me. If we could rise from our misery, seek each other once more, and find again the solace of each other’s lips and eyes."

"I want your life filling and stirring me. I want your happiness beneath my heart and your sorrows in my eyes and your peace in the fingers of my hand."

"God, how pointless and empty the world is! Days filled with cheap and tarnished moments succeed each other, restless and haunted nights follow in bitter routine: the sun shines without brightness, and the moon rises without light."

"Suddenly he saw them, the bottles of aguardiente, of anís, of jerez, of Highland Queen, the glasses, a babel of glasses—towering, like the smoke from the train that day—built to the sky, then falling, the glasses toppling and crashing, falling downhill from the Generalife Gardens, the bottles breaking, bottles of Oporto, tinto, blanco, bottles of Pernod, Oxygènée, absinthe, bottles smashing, bottles cast aside, falling with a thud on the ground in parks, under benches, beds, cinema seats, hidden in drawers at Consulates, bottles of Calvados dropped and broken, or bursting into smithereens, tossed into garbage heaps, flung into the sea, the Mediterranean, the Caspian, the Caribbean, bottles floating in the ocean, dead Scotchmen on the Atlantic highlands—and now he saw them, smelt them, all, from the very beginning—bottles, bottles, bottles, and glasses, glasses, glasses, of bitter, of Dubonnet, of Falstaff, Rye, Johnny Walker, Vieux Whiskey blanc Canadien, the apéritifs, the digestifs, the demis, the dobles, the noch ein Herr Obers, the et glas Araks, the tusen taks, the bottles, the bottles, the beautiful bottles of tequila, and the gourds, gourds, gourds, the millions of gourds of beautiful mescal . . ."

"What is man but a little soul holding up a corpse?"