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- How to Get Rich (Part II)
How to Get Rich (Part II)
Matt Karamazov
April 30, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 40 minutes
“Why would a rich person waste time writing a book to help other people get rich? Two reasons. Because I enjoy writing something I feel I know about. And because I believe that almost anyone of reasonable intelligence can become rich, given sufficient motivation and application.
It also helps that I am writing while sipping a very fine wine indeed (a Chateau d’Yquem 1986 if you really want to know), nibbling on fresh smoked conch tidbits, ensconced by a window with one of the most beautiful views on earth.”
“People who grow rich almost always improve their sex life. More people want to have sex with them. That’s just the way human beings work.”
“Knowledge learned the hard way combined with the avoidance of error, whenever and wherever possible, is the soundest basis for success in any endeavor.”
“Rich enough to live where you want, to go where you want, to do what you want, to meet who you want. Rich enough to buy the only two things apart from health and love worth fussing about in life. Time. And the option of not having to be in any particular place on any particular day doing any particular thing in order to pay the rent or mortgage. And rich enough to begin to worry about taxes.”
“It sounds crazy, but the richer you are the more financial advisors you employ, the less likelihood there is that you can ever discover what you are really worth. It’s a nice problem to have, but it’s still a problem.
This is why so many rich people distrust the ‘rich lists’ and league tables of wealth published every so often in newspapers and magazines. We know that if we cannot calculate our true net worth, and if our paid armies of accountants cannot agree upon a figure, then compilers of lists and financial journalists certainly cannot do so with any real accuracy.
In the words of the art collector and oil billionaire John Paul Getty: ‘If you can actually count your money, you are not really a rich man.’”
“Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex. You thought of nothing else if you didn’t have it, and thought of other things if you did.”
“Of course, all measurements are arbitrary. They are just an attempt by humans to make some kind of order out of a chaotic universe. In and of themselves, they are meaningless.”
“Now, enough waffling about definitions. Let’s get down to making some dough. Let’s get rich!”
“No task is a long one but the task on which one dare not start. It becomes a nightmare.”
“Conventional wisdom is usually right. But when it is wrong, it can offer quite extraordinary opportunities for those too stubborn or inexperienced to pay attention to well-meaning naysayers.”
“The only way to deal with fear is to cozy up to it. To look it in the eye and pump its hand. To translate its negative energy into adrenaline. To harness it. To laugh with it, rather than at it.”
“A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and quietly estranged.”
“A committee is a group of the unwilling, chosen from the unfit to do the unnecessary.”
“Committees are discouraged on the battlefield. A commander may be proved wrong. He may be proved right. But prompt decisions and orders, right or wrong, are far healthier than endless debate and prevarication. This applies equally to a debate within one’s own mind.”
“The Germans have a superb word for the (secret) pleasure humans obtain from the misfortunes of others. It is schadenfreude - from schaden meaning ‘harm’ (from which we get the word ‘shadow’), and freude meaning ‘joy.’
Those of you who are definitely going to be rich will recognize it often enough in the faces and body language of idiots around you. It is the price you must learn to pay for any attempt to raise yourself in the world. And I suspect that was as true ten thousand years ago as it is today.”
“A horse can be tamed, bridled, saddled, harnessed, and (eventually) ridden. Harnessing the power of such a creature adds mightily to your own. Thus the nightmare of prospective failure provides you with the very opportunity you are seeking.
Not only does it restrain smarter people than yourself from becoming rich - and there can only be so many rich people in the world - it affords you the chance of increasing your confidence, both when you confront it and when you master it.
For make no mistake, if you will not confront and harness this all-too-human emotion in one way or another, then you are doomed to remain relatively poor. You either get over it, go around it, go at it, mount it, duck under it, or cozy up to it. But you cannot surrender to it. That way lies paralysis, prevarication, ignominy, and defeat.
After a lifetime of making money and observing better men and women than I fall by the wayside, I am convinced that fear of failing in the eyes of the world is the single biggest impediment to amassing wealth.
Trust me on this. If you shy away for any reason whatever, then the way is blocked. The gate is shut - and will remain shut. You will never get started. You will never get rich.”
“Self-belief is a priceless asset.”
“If you will not believe in yourself, then why should anyone else? Without self-belief, nothing can be accomplished. With it, nothing is impossible. It is as brutal and as black and white as that. If you take no other memory from this book, then take that single thought. It was worth a damn sight more than the price you paid for it.”
“If you have experience, a little investment cash, and will make the time, then the world will bring to your door an amazing collection of visionaries, con artists, madmen, and budding entrepreneurs. They all have something to say. Most of your time will be wasted. But what is not wasted will make you richer. Much richer.”
“Luck is preparation multiplied by opportunity.”
“The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.”
“The fortress that parleys is already half taken.”
“Michael, their need will outweigh my greed. I am sure of it. Let’s wait and see.”
“Nobody ever got poor by listening.”
“If you would negotiate with any man, you must either know his nature and fashions, and so lead him; or his ends, and so persuade him; or his weakness or disadvantages, and so awe him; or those that have an interest in him, and so govern him.
In dealing with cunning persons, we must ever consider their ends to interpret their speeches; and it is good to say little to them, and that which they least look for. In all negotiations of difficulty, a man may not look to sow and reap at once; but must prepare business, and so ripen it by degrees.”
“To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.”
“A few measly million dollars less tax? That’s shocking. I’ve made more than that in deals I can barely remember now. I once made a million dollars by selling a magazine I had not even published yet to a rival. A million dollars for a day’s work. And why? Why? Why? Because I owned it. I owned it all.”
“Over the next thirty years, I estimate that their suggested 20 percent, had I handed it over, would have earned those four gentlemen around $80,000,000 - say it again - eighty million dollars, in current asset value and past dividends.
This is the problem with sharing ownership. The laws of simple mathematics are relentless and obdurate. And if I had given 20 percent to those four employees, should I not have had to do so with many others as they joined the company and worked hard to make it a success? Where would it all end?
I’m not a bloody charity. I’m an entrepreneur trying to make a small fortune, not the Salvation Army. I pay people to get a job done. And I pay them well. I try to make it as much fun as I can along the way.
I reward senior managers with bloody huge bonuses based on performance and results. Millions of dollars have been paid out in such bonuses over the years. But I will not give them a share. Not one. Not for love. Not for loyalty. Not to be fair. Because capitalism isn’t fair. Life isn’t fair. The lottery of what genes we are born with isn’t fair. The moon and the stars and the gas clouds of Alpha Centauri aren’t fair.
Except for your loved ones or closest friends, it’s every man for himself in this world, in case you haven’t noticed: ‘No prisoners! The Lord will know his own!’”
“Never retreat. Never explain. Get it done and let them howl.”
“Would I give my brother all the money I ever made if he needed it? Yes, I would. But I will not give him a share in my company! Because ownership isn’t the important thing. If you want to be rich, it’s the only thing.”
“Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relative to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.”
“What is robbing a bank compared with founding a bank?”
“The meek shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights.”
“If you work in my mine, I’ll pay you fairly, try to make it a great mine to work in, incentivize you if it makes sense for the company to do so, contribute to your pension, perhaps contribute to your health care and the health care of your family, teach you to grow your skills and thereby improve your personal net worth, ensure you have paid vacations, ensure you are not bullied or in any way discriminated against, and concern myself with your personal safety at work. I will do all these things in a thoughtful and consistent manner. But I will not share out the pie with you when I sell the mine and its mineral rights. Fair enough?
If you don’t think it’s fair, please take a job somewhere else. I accept that that is why I am rich and you are not. But that is how the system under which we labor is constructed. If you want to change it, go into politics. (You won’t change it there, either, but that’s another story.)”
“I don’t care about power. I care about getting rich.”
“There is no fortress so strong that money cannot take it.”
“And I dream of the days when work was scrappy, And rare in our pocket the mark of the mint, And we were angry, and poor and happy, And proud of seeing our names in print.”
“The first step? Just do it
And bluff your way through it.
Remember to duck!
Godspeed…
And Good Luck!”
There's always a way to succeed in life, no matter who you are or where you come from, but you're never going to find it by following the herd. If the herd knew how to achieve success and get everything they ever wanted, you wouldn't need this book.
Sample Quotes from the Book:
“Naturally, the 80 percent diligently obeying all the rules made for them and by them despise the 20 percent who defy some of the rules and the 1 to 5 percent who defy ALL the rules and get extraordinary, exceptional, infinitely better results.
If you listen to and conform to the 80 percent, you will be one of them. Here, I’m showing you how the top 1 percent to 5 percent think and act very, very differently, and get very, very different results.”
“In fact, some excellent career or business advice is to pick endeavors because of the type of person the endeavors will force you to become.
An early mentor used to urge people of very limited financial means to commit to the goal of becoming a millionaire, not so much for the money, he explained, but because of the people they would have to become, the positive characteristics and behaviors they would have to develop in order to achieve the financial benchmark.
He was widely misunderstood on this point and perceived by some to be a preacher of greed. What he meant, simply, was:
Big commitment to big goals build big people.”
“College graduates, on average, out-earn non-college graduates by six figures to, at most, a million dollars, lifetime. That IS an argument in favor of a college education, although a million dollars divided over 40 to 60 years of active work is not as gigantic as it sounds stated as a lump sum.
Look closer and here is what you will discover: If college actually prepares you for anything, it is for a job. College does not prepare you to be entrepreneurial, and it certainly does not prepare you to get rich.”
Read the Full Breakdown: No B.S. Guide to Succeeding in Business by Breaking All the Rules, by Dan S. Kennedy
In this book, personal development legend Brian Tracy teaches you how to establish winning habits that will lead inevitably to the success and fulfillment you desire, while helping you actualize the potential you may never have known you had.
Sample Quotes from the Book:
“You came into this world with more talents and abilities than you could ever use. You could not exhaust your full potential if you lived 100 lifetimes.
Your amazing brain has 100 billion cells, each of which is connected to as many as 20,000 other neurons. The possible combinations and permutations of ideas, thoughts, and insights you can generate are equivalent to the number one followed by eight pages of zeroes. According to brain expert Tony Buzan, the number of thoughts you can think is greater than all the molecules in the known universe.
This means that whatever you have accomplished in your life to this date is only a small fraction of what you are truly capable of achieving.”
“Whatever your self-concept, your habit of thinking about money, or any other area of performance, very soon becomes your ‘comfort zone.’ Your comfort zone then becomes your greatest single obstacle to improved performance.
Once you get into a comfort zone in any area, you will struggle unconsciously to remain in that comfort zone, even though it may be vastly below what you are truly capable of achieving in that area.”
“Make developing new habits a regular part of your life. Always be working on developing a new habit that can help you. One new habit per month will amount to 12 new habits each year, or 60 new, life-enhancing habits every five years.
At that rate, your life would change so profoundly that you would become a whole new person, in a very positive way, in a very short period of time.”
Read the Full Breakdown: Million Dollar Habits, by Brian Tracy
If you left university with just a degree and a pile of debt, you were robbed. Universities today often force students to choose between learning and success, but it doesn't have to be this way. In this incredible book, former Yale professor William Deresiewicz discusses the true value of education, and lays out a plan for how you can get one - both inside and outside of the classroom.
Sample Quotes from the Book:
“What’s the return on investment on college? What’s the return on investment of having children, spending time with friends, listening to music, reading a book? The things that are most worth doing are worth doing for their own sake.”
“The purpose of college, to put all this another way, is to turn adolescents into adults. You needn’t go to school for that, but if you’re going to be there anyway, then that’s the most important thing to get accomplished. That is the true education: accept no substitutes.
The idea that we should take the first four years of young adulthood and devote them to career preparation alone, neglecting every other part of life, is nothing short of an obscenity.
If that’s what people had you do, then you were robbed. And if you find yourself to be the same person at the end of college as you were at the beginning – the same beliefs, the same values, the same desires, the same goals for the same reasons – then you did it wrong. Go back and do it again.”
“This is your shot. This is your chance to become, not the person that you want to be, not the person you’ve decided that you’re going to be, but the person that you never could have dreamed of being.”
Read the Full Breakdown: Excellent Sheep, by William Deresiewicz
A devastating crisis of meaning inspired Paul Millerd and many others to escape corporate slavery and build a real life for themselves in a universe teeming with more possibilities than could ever be imagined. This book is a call to adventure for you to join them.
Sample Quotes from the Book:
“The pathless path is an alternative to the default path. It is an embrace of uncertainty and discomfort. It's a call to adventure in a world that tells us to conform. For me, it's also a gentle reminder to laugh when things feel out of control and trust that an uncertain future is not a problem to be solved."
“So much of my identity had been connected with being a high achiever. Straight A's. Dean's List. McKinsey. MIT. When I was sick, I would have traded every last credential for a single day of feeling okay."
“‘Are those the only two options?’ I asked. 'Yes,' he replied. I listed a few other paths that he conceded were possible, but he added, 'I don't know anyone who has done that.'
Many people fall into this trap. We are convinced that the only way forward is the path we've been on or what we've seen people like us do. This is a silent conspiracy that constrains the possibilities of our lives."
Read the Full Breakdown: The Pathless Path, by Paul Millerd
The View from the Opposition:
No one's ideas are beyond questioning. In this section, I argue the case for the opposition and raise some points you might wish to evaluate for yourself while reading this book.
#1: Why Dolphins Are Smarter Than Humans
One of my favorite parts in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, is when he said that humans always believed they were smarter than dolphins, because humans invented things like airplanes, skyscrapers, and supercars, while the dolphins just sat around hanging out in the water all day.
Naturally, according to Adams, the dolphins believed they were smarter than humans for exactly the same reason! Dennis does argue both points in the book, of course, but plenty of people see a book like this and think to themselves, "Man, what a waste of a potentially joyous human life! Why does anybody need $600,000,000?!" Why indeed.
The ancient Greek philosopher, Diogenes, would have sided with the dolphins on this one too. In one of my favorite stories, it's said that Alexander the Great once visited Diogenes to praise him, after hearing that he had disdained all physical manifestations of wealth - living on the street, owning nothing, like a dolphin (sort of).
Alexander then asked Diogenes one question: "Is there anything that I, being the richest and most powerful man in the world, can you do for you, Diogenes?"
Diogenes responded that, yes, there was something that Alexander could do for him! "Could you please move over a little to the left? You're blocking my sun."
I retell that story here because, if you're as carefree and unbounded as Diogenes, you don't need Alexander's renown, Dennis's wealth, or literally anything else. You are completely self-sufficient, happy, and free in a way that neither one of the other men could ever be.
#2: Make the Pie Higher
I don't actually think George W. Bush is stupid, but he certainly has said some stupid things, now commonly referred to as Bush-isms. A few of my favorites before I get into my main point here:
"I think it's time for humanity to enter the solar system."
"The problem with the French is, they don't even have a word for entrepreneur!"
"They misunderestimated me."
Okay, so these are great, but he also said that "We ought to make the pie higher," which, even though it sounds ridiculous, is something he was right about. Once you untangle what the hell he was trying to say, of course.
It also happens to tie in with what Felix Dennis said about holding onto equity, and one of my favorite quotes by legendary speaker and personal development trainer, Zig Ziglar. It goes: "You can get anything you want in life, just as long as you help enough other people get what they want."
That's become something of a guiding philosophy of mine, and I believe it's a tremendously effective way of conducting business. You don't fight over the same small share of pie; you expand the pie. You make the pie higher, in Bush's unfortunate words.
This is where I would push back a bit on Dennis's ideas, although I certainly understand where he's coming from. You should maintain an awareness of how potentially valuable equity is, and you don't want to give any of it up unnecessarily, but at the same time, you should also work to arrange win-win-win relationships wherever you go, where everyone gets more, instead of a few people holding onto nearly everything.
On top of that, I love the idea of giving out credit and recognition as generously as humanly possible. You can accomplish so much more if you don't care who gets the credit, and you can become so much wealthier if you make the people around you wealthier as well.
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
So you've finished reading. What do you do now?
Reading for pleasure is great, and I wholeheartedly support it. However, I am intensely practical when I'm reading for a particular purpose. I want a result. I want to take what I've learned and apply it to my one and only life to make it better!
Because that's really what the Great Books all say. They all say: "You must change your life!" So here, below, are some suggestions for how you can apply the wisdom found in this breakdown to improve your actual life.
Please commit to taking massive action on this immediately! Acting on what you've learned here today will also help you solidify it in your long-term memory. So there's a double benefit! Let's begin...
#1: Calculate Your "Enough" Number
It's very, very hard to spend $5,000,000 a year. That's what Alex Becker says, anyway. For right now, I'll have to take his word for it.
But it checks out, especially once you dig into the numbers, which is an extremely worthwhile exercise for everyone to do before they wind up wasting away in a cold, dark, deserted castle, surrounded by $600,000,000 that they'll never get to spend.
Here in this first Action Step, you're going to calculate your "enough" number - the amount of money you'd need to earn per month (or per year, or have in the bank), to feel financially secure. Like you had enough.
For context, my "number" is $50,000 per month. I'd say that I'm about a year or two away from hitting that number, but even now I don't feel deprived of anything. That $50K per month would cover basically every single thing I ever wanted, including charitable donations, savings and investments, etc. If I hadn't gone through this exercise though, my number would likely be much higher.
I won't spend a lot of time on this, but just break it down.
Consider everything that most people lust over, and spend their time dreaming about acquiring. Even if you spend $10,000/month renting out a luxury apartment, $10,000/month on car payments for a Lamborghini Aventador, $1,000/week going out to expensive restaurants, $50,000/year buying expensive clothes, $100,000/year sending your kids to private school, $100,000/year going on expensive vacations, and add another, oh I don't know, $100,000/year for everything else, you're still "only" at $642,000/year in expenses.
Granted, that's not nothing, and you still have things like taxes, contributing to your investment accounts, giving to charity, etc., but it's a LONG way off from $5,000,000/year. And here you have people running around thinking they have to be billionaires! It's madness!
My point is that I think you'll find, that if you run the actual numbers, you won't need (or want) as much as you think you do. But also, don't be modest! Don't hold back. Don't minimize your own desires and try and tell yourself that you don't want something if you actually do.
The world is rich, opportunity is abundant, and a lot of happiness can be found in the pursuit itself. It's possible to be happy, yet still not satisfied. You can find happiness in the here and now, and yet still chase big income goals and buy expensive stuff. They're not mutually exclusive, but it can be a difficult balance to strike, and especially if you don't know your numbers!
#2: Pick Your Basket
Everything else rests on that goals you set out to achieve, and so I took some extra space in that last Action Step to help you avoid wasting years of your life earning money that you don't need and will never spend. Next, we have another extremely important decision to make: how you plan on getting rich.
There are multitudes of ways to go about getting rich, and this isn't meant to be an exhaustive list, but in Rich Habits, Thomas C. Corley lays out several possible paths to riches that are available to you. You don't necessarily have to start a business like Felix Dennis did, although that can be the fastest route to take.
Patient saving and investing can make you rich, it's just that it takes an extremely long time, and you'll live through periods where your stock portfolio takes an absolute thrashing, and there's nothing you can do about it (or should do about it) except watch it drop, and wait for it to stabilize and bounce back.
Starting a business is the path that I chose, and it's a great one if you have a higher risk/anxiety tolerance, you have a strong sense of independence, and you don't mind working 100-hour weeks in the beginning, so you can work 10-hour weeks 10 years from now.
Many of these different paths to wealth can be combined with the others, especially in cases where one might develop high-paying, in-demand skills, and earn a great living working for someone else. Think: doctors, lawyers, cyber-security experts, programmers, etc. You might earn a degree or certification in one of these fields, live extremely cheaply in your 20s and 30s, and basically retire when you're 35.
There are a multitude of ways to get rich in this world, but the common thread when it comes to succeeding with any of them involves becoming extremely knowledgeable and competent in your field, keeping your living expenses low while you invest in income-producing assets, avoiding "lifestyle inflation," or succumbing to the pressure to upgrade your lifestyle just to keep up with your favorite influencer, and most importantly: committing to the process.
#3: Cultivate Delusional Self-Belief
One of the "secrets" to my own success is that I never once (ever) believed that I wouldn't make it. That I wouldn't ultimately be successful, no matter what. I believed (and believe) in myself so strongly, that I absolutely, categorically refuse to entertain the notion that I could fail at anything that's truly important to me.
I'm talking just a fucking DELUSIONAL level of confidence, self-belief, and optimism. It's a force - a power and a presence that I bring into my daily life that helps me bend the universe to my will, and dominate any field I choose to enter.
You should hear the way I talk to myself! I may be all quiet and unassuming in person - interested in you and what you have to say (genuinely), and always willing to listen and learn. But when I'm by myself? Oh man. I am a force of fucking nature, within my own mind.
Again, this is more swearing than I typically do. But that's the kind of attitude you need to have as well. Naturally, you should still be polite and respectful to others, as I am. I dominate my own mind, I don't go around intent on dominating others. This is an inner game, one that I'm winning no matter what.
This is another common theme in the lives of other unreasonably successful people. It's said that Steve Jobs had a reality distortion field surrounding him at all times, helping him achieve the seemingly-impossible and make dents in the universe.
He's not the only one - not by a long shot - and if you want to be unreasonably successful, it's a habit of mind that you'd be well served to get into as well. If you want to be rich, there is no other way.
#4: Make a Self-Promise
One of the best ways to develop confidence and personal power is to make promises to yourself and keep them. It's quite literally some of the best advice that I, Felix Dennis, or anyone could ever give you. It's so fundamentally important to be able to trust yourself, rely on yourself, and know - deep, deep down - that you are a person that you can depend on.
That being said, if you're going to do this - if you're going to pursue this whole "getting rich" thing - you have to make an unbreakable promise to yourself that you will see it through to the very end.
Promise yourself that you will give this pursuit your absolute greatest effort, that you will never, ever give in, and that you will never, ever give up, unless of course you genuinely decide to stop the chase.
End it when you've accomplished your objective, or when your true desires have changed, but not because it's hard, or because you're not seeing progress as fast as you'd like, or because other people are trying to convince you that it's not worth it.
If you're going to do this, go all the way. Promise yourself that you are going to give everything you have within you to make this happen, and hold onto this self-promise no matter what. Because if you can't trust even yourself, who can you trust?
#5: Die with Zero
There's one more book I'm going to recommend (sadly, it wasn't written in time for Felix Dennis to read it or benefit from it), and it's called Die with Zero, by Bill Perkins. The main idea behind the book is that you should seek an optimal balance between your time, your money, and your health across your lifespan.
It's all too easy to give up your time and sabotage your health when you're younger just to make money, and then to turn around and spend all that money trying to get your health back. It doesn't work. It's a trap, and it's one that's not easily avoided.
The only way you're going to be able to avoid it successfully is to develop a keen awareness of your own life priorities, recalibrate them as needed, and check in every so often to make sure that you're still on track, that you're still living the life you want to live. It's so incredibly easy to drift off course, and remain off course until it's too late. Self-awareness and regularly reflection protects you from that.
Another key point in the book is that, obviously, you can't take any of it with you when you die. So you might consider aiming to "die with zero," spending and/or giving away all your net worth while you're alive.
That doesn't mean draining your retirement funds just so you can take an extravagant vacation, it's more so about enriching the quality of your and your family's lives in the here and now, when your money can do the most good.
Perkins makes the additional point that your children are likely to be earning more money as they get older anyway, so when your money could really benefit them is today (or at least soon), as they attempt to get businesses off the ground, accumulate life experiences, etc. You don't have to be dead to give it all away.
The Action Step here is to name at least one "living beneficiary" of your estate (it could even be yourself), and help them enjoy their lives now, while at the same preparing them to have a healthy and wealthy future.
Figure out the optimal balance of time spent working, time spent keeping yourself healthy, and time spent enjoying your life, and structure your life in keeping with your goals. And always remember, money can buy happiness if you spend it on others, and if you don't believe that money can buy happiness, you haven't given enough away.
"The path to success is to take massive, determined action.”
Felix Dennis (1947 – 2014) was the colorful publishing entrepreneur whose company, Dennis Publishing, owns many successful titles including flagship publication The Week.
A regular fixture in the Sunday Times rich list Dennis travelled a long way since the poverty of his childhood in a south London suburb. He first gained notoriety as one of the editors of the 60s satirical magazine, Oz, and as such was prosecuted for obscenity in an infamous trial in 1971 (he was subsequently acquitted at the High Court of Appeal).
His business interests and flamboyant party lifestyle left little room for poetry, though he’d always read and enjoyed it since a boy. However a spell of serious illness in 1999 found him taking stock and poetry suddenly flooded into his life.
Since his first poem scribbled on a post-it note in hospital he wrote over a thousand and published six best-selling collections. As in so many aspects of his life, his involvement in the poetry world was unconventional: volumes of contemporary poetry are supposed to be slim – his often run to over two hundred pages.
Collections of modern poetry, especially first collections, do not sell over ten thousand copies – his have and are being reprinted. First time poets don’t go on national reading tours – Dennis did and even appeared with members of the Royal Shakespeare Company on the stage of the Swan Theatre in Stratford.
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