Thom Gunn

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

Ginsberg's Collected Poems contains a wonderful poem about making it with Neal Cassady.

When I first started to write, I was aware of being queer, but I didn't write about it. Queer poems would probably not have been accepted by the editors I sent them to.

I always dreamed of writing in an orchestral context. But when you finish a piece, you want to hear it. So we played everything with Phish.

In a small spacecraft, it was hard for the other two guys to sleep when the on-duty man was talking to Mission Control regularly.

I'm quite content to spend my life helping young people find themselves. I've had my fill of politics.