Writing Being I admired what my students were writing, but I think their improvement doesn't directly result from me but from being in a class, being with each other. - Thom Gunn
Home I don't know how to sit outside myself and test against a hypothetical self who stayed home. - Thom Gunn
Friends Age I had assumed that I would age with all my friends growing old around me, dying off very gradually one by one. And here was a plague that cut them off so early. - Thom Gunn
People I deliberately decided to write a kind of guide to leather bars for straight people, for people not into leather, so that people could see what it was all about. - Thom Gunn
Popular Poetry There have been two popular subjects for poetry in the last few decades: the Vietnam War and AIDS, about both of which almost all of us have felt deeply. - Thom Gunn
And History will smile to think that this is the species for which Socrates and Jesus Christ died. - Julien Benda
Bereavement is the sharpest challenge to our trust in God; if faith can overcome this, there is no mountain which it cannot remove. - Dean Inge