Poetry is something to make us wiser and better by continually revealing those types of beauty and truth which God has set in all men's souls.

To be perfectly honest I think that as I'm growing older I'm just growing more impatient. I'll be very happy if at some point people say 'Michael's grown wiser and softer in his old age.' But we'll have to wait and see what my next project is.

It were a real increase of human happiness could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels or rendered otherwise invisible and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings till they emerged sadder and wiser at the age of twenty-five.