Youth is a quality not unlike health: it's found in greater abundance among the young, but we all need access to it.

I have the same interests as women. Well, apart from football and music, obviously. I've always had as many female friends as male ones. The novels I read as a young man were all by women writers, and when I started writing, I wanted to set my books inside the home.

At a crude estimate, I must have played 'Thunder Road' 1,500 times.

Words don't come very easily to me. Which, given my profession, is a worrying impediment.

When you're teaching creative nonfiction, it helps to have written about your life in a very open way, because you can say, 'Look, how much are you willing to risk emotionally to write? How careful can you be with the other people you're writing about?'

With the brush we merely tint, while the imagination alone produces colour.

We always wanted to be a big infra player in India - in sectors such as energy, healthcare, education, locomotives, etc.

Poetry is a special use of language that opens onto the real. The business of the poet is truth telling, which is why in the Celtic tradition no one could be a teacher unless he or she was a poet.