In London there was no home cooking worthy of the name. When you were in funds you ate out. But only the people whose faces appeared in such publications as Town and Queen could afford to eat in restaurants serving food which would leave them looking and feeling better instead of worse.

Little books are the things to write at my age, I've decided. Avoid the big ones, go for the little ones.

Humphrey Searle writes music that sounds like the theme from 'Star Wars' played backwards through a washing machine.

Even in moments of tranquility, Murray Walker sounds like a man whose trousers are on fire.

Young men especially - I don't know if young women feel much the same - but young men think they are immortal, automatically. They have no idea of time because they have so much energy and I was like that.

The provincial intellectual is doomed to arguing at low level... there is still no Australian literary world, not in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide. It is some consolation to realise that there is no literary world in Birmingham or Los Angeles either. I have heard there is one in Montreal, but I don't believe it. The literary world is in London and New York, the only cities big enough to sustain magazines which can afford to reject copy.

Stop worrying, nobody gets out of this world alive.