You litter poems with too much learning when you're younger.

Looking back, fire images have been constant in my poetry. As a boy, it was my job to light the fire each morning, and I remember the celebratory bonfires at the end of the war. It was from staring into fire that I began my first poetry.

I need to look back on my poetic ventures, make sense of them as a whole, and move forward... and to experiment without external demands.

It is always better to write for the whole of society than for the poetry-reading public.

I have always made sure that I put my game ahead of anything else, sometimes even before friends and family.

I grew up in a family with five kids.

You can still love your job and feel guilty. You can still love your child and feel guilty. There's a lot of grey in that. It's about being conscious when you are spending time with your kids, being with them in the moment.

I cannot take away the fact I am a small-town boy from India, from a lower-middle class family, and was actually standing in front of De Niro - not on an equal level, but as an actor, on the same pedestal.