Outside our small safe place flies mystery.

You can understand a lot about yourself by working out which fairytale you use to present your world to yourself in.

Do I do as false prophets do and puff air into simulacra? Am I a Sorcerer--like Macbeth's witches--mixing truth and lies in incandescent shapes? Or am I a kind of very minor scribe of a prophetic Book--telling such truth as in me lies, with aid of such fiction as I acknowledge mine, as Prospero acknowledged Caliban.

I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the second world war.

Our days weave together the simple pleasures of daily life, which we should never take for granted, and the higher pleasures of Art and Thought which we may now taste as we please, with none to forbid or criticise.

I think there are a lot more important things than art in the world. But not to me.

Once you get older, people stop listening to what you say. It's very agreeable once you get used to it.