-
I never sue journalists. I employ journalists. I employ too many of them. I don't sue journalists.
-
Everything I publish is for my readers.
-
I'm very proud of the fact that I'm one of Britain's biggest selling poets. That gives me a huge amount of pleasure.
-
Money is power. Power is an aphrodisiac.
-
The problem with rich lists is... it is impossible to know what someone is worth until they have died and you have sold it.
-
I love the business of business; I love the risk raking.
-
Publishing magazines for yourself is not good business, man.
-
America is not the center of the universe.
-
I've been busy for years, buying land, often under pseudonyms, and planting trees on it. All the money is going into it when I die - and in the end I'd like to think that it will be 20 to 30,000 acres.
-
You can actually be bored stiff while you're dying.
-
The climate has been changing since there was a climate.
-
You shouldn't go around the world behaving ruthlessly when you don't have to. Sometimes you do have to. There is only so much pie to go around. If you're going to take more than your fair share of pie, as socialists would look at it, then someone else is not getting his. That means you've got to take it away from them.
-
Native trees are so important to our ecosystem.
-
You can collect all the plastic bottle caps you want as long as you give me the money so we can get off this death trap, find somewhere else and have tremendous fun screwing that up as well.
-
The vast majority of free verse is ghastly. Utterly ghastly. No one reads it. No one listens to it.
-
This modern mania for interfering in other's lives, usually under the guise of health and safety concerns, is highly irritating and counterproductive. Down with the nanny state.
-
I have one talent, and that's figuring out what people want about two minutes before they know it themselves.
-
In the end, the railroads made America and nanotech will make the 21st century, and that is the end of the story. The beginning of the story and the end of the story.
-
I have an over-attachment to precision, which is why I've sold more magazines than any man alive.
-
When I see something that's wrong, I just speak and act first and I'll take the consequences later.
-
I should have liked to get married, but over many decades I have lived essentially alone. I go to sleep when I'm tired, get up when I wake up, have my food prepared when I'm hungry. I can't bear the thought that I'd have to coincide, make an effort.
-
When you're writing, you're in a totally different zone... I can start a difficult poem and look up at the clock and see to my astonishment that three hours have passed.
-
I have been portrayed by actors in three television documentaries, two plays, one musical and a film. It's no fun watching yourself being traduced and imitated by an actor.
-
You cannot properly bring up children when you are 69 or 70 and they are 12 and at the height of their madness. You can physically do it, but I don't think it's morally justified.