James Fenton

My feeling is that poetry will wither on the vine if you don't regularly come back to the simplest fundamentals of the poem: rhythm, rhyme, simple subjects - love, death, war.

Working alone on a poem, a poet is of all artists the most free. The poem can be written with a modicum of technology, and can be published, in most cases, quite cheaply.

Sometimes I have thought that a song should look disappointing on the page - a little thin, perhaps, a little repetitive, or a little on the obvious side, or a mixture of all of these things.

At any rate, I can only see such a success having positive effects for everyone, particularly as our anticipation of the World cup would only increase further.

We may be so eager to protect the right to dissent that we lose sight of the difference between dissent and subversion.

To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every kind of tyranny.