Randall Jarrell

The people who live in a golden age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks.

One of the most obvious facts about grown-ups, to a child, is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.

A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.

Although I write to entertain, and try to keep my work free of didacticism, I do have a rather passionate belief in our need to be connected to - and to learn from - history.

Recently, I was in Bernalda, my dad's ancestral home town in Italy. He has just refurbished a palazzo and turned it into a hotel, so we had my sister's wedding there. It was beautiful.

I just had an idea that went right over my head.