I'm always aware that I risk being taken for a neurasthenic prima donna when I explain to someone who wants 'just a little' of my time that five minutes of the wrong kind of distraction can ruin a working day.

The best antidote I have found is to yearn for something. As long as you yearn, you can't congeal: There is a forward motion to yearning.

Actors between plays are like ghosts looking for bodies to inhabit.

What did a few ripples in the flesh matter when, all too soon, now or later, that flesh would be making its return journey to dust?

The more you respect and focus on the singular and the strange, the more you become aware of the universal and infinite.

I confess, right at the start, to the doubts - and sometimes outright dreads - that go with me as I climb the stairs to my study in the morning, coffee mug in hand: I have to admit to the habitual apprehension mixed with a sort of reverence, as I light the incense . . . and wonder: what is going to happen today? Will anything happen? Will the angel come today?

None of us suddenly becomes something overnight. The preparations have been in the making for lifetime.