Thom Gunn

Deep feeling doesn't make for good poetry. A way with language would be a bit of help.

I deliberately decided to write a kind of guide to leather bars for straight people, for people not into leather, so that people could see what it was all about.

We learned in the university to consider Wordsworth and Keats as Romantics. They were only a generation apart, but Wordsworth didn't even read Keats's book when he gave him a copy.

With my early work I got eviscerated by my male professors, and so you learned to disguise your impulses, as many women have done. And that's definitely changed.

If every time you engage in a sex act, you go into a confession box, you will never accept your own sexuality.

I think the main thing I remembered throughout all of filming it was just that she just was extremely self-destructive. I think everybody can relate to that a little bit. She doesn't like herself.