'Craig Raine is incapable of a dull thought.' Ian McEwan

'There is something odd, something impossible, about the words 'broken' and 'heart' put together. You can't break a heart. It isn't a mechanism, in this instance. It is a figure for love. When the heart's mechanism breaks down, we call it heart failure. It is a physical condition. So what do we make of this impossibility - heartbreak ?'

'Craig Raine taught us to become strangers in our familiar world.' James Fenton