I would hope that nothing that I write would ever seem earnest because I subscribe absolutely to Franz Nietzsche's claim when he says, "Ah, earnestness, the sure sign of a slow mind." Earnest people are always a bit on the thick side in my experience.

The process of book writing for me is entirely one of trial and error.

Foreign governments are going to be poring through all these Donald Trump tweets looking for - to try and discern what it means for foreign policy.

I'd have no rituals, but I'm a person of compulsive habit. That's just some awful residue of a ritual. And one of the reasons for that is my living this life, which is otherwise so free of obligations. It's not at all unusual for anybody who's independently employed to crave a way of living whereby they create the structures without which their lives would otherwise start slopping around all over the place.

I guess that as life is speeded up and our capacity for concentration is being nibbled away at by all the obvious things, that leads us actually to be more susceptible to boredom.

The ideal is to feel at home anywhere, everywhere.

I think I do have a sort of terrible propensity for boredom and for being bored, even though I am absolutely of the opinion that one shouldn't be bored and that there is no excuse for it and that it is a personal failing.