We are all tempted, Mma. We are all tempted when it comes to cake.

We don't forget.... Our heads may be small, but they are as full of memories as the sky may sometimes be full of swarming bees, thousands and thousands of memories, of smells, of places, of little things that happened to us and which came back, unexpectedly, to remind us who we are.

The telling of a story, like virtually everything in this life, was always made all the easier by a cup of tea.

It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it. In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life. You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to eat your pumpkin. That brought you down to earth. That gave you a reason for going on. Pumpkin.

And that, in a way, was the burden of being a philosopher: one knew what one had to do, but it was so often the opposite of what one really wanted to do.

Writers obviously have to bear witness to the harsh face of the age.

We are all tempted, Mma. We are all tempted when it comes to cake.