Well, I had this little notion – I started writing when I was eleven, writing poetry. I was passionately addicted to it it was my great refuge through adolescence. – Harry Mathews
Translation is the paradigm, the exemplar of all writing. It is translation that demonstrates most vividly the yearning for transformation that underlies every act involving speech, that supremely human gift. – Harry Mathews
My next project is to get back to that. Actually, to learn how to write poetry. Im not kidding. – Harry Mathews
Well, my relationship to America at the time I left was very limited. – Harry Mathews
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things. – T.S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent, 1919