I joined a small but growing post-Trotskyite Luxembourgist sect.

There are days when I miss my old convictions as if they were an amputated limb. But in general I feel better, and no less radical, and you will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do its own thinking.

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and - since there is no other metaphor - also the soul.

I'm not that keen on the idea of being unconscious.

I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me.

No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.

In one way, I suppose, I have been 'in denial' for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light.