I think I can recognize when a piece is at a state of completion. I always say to my wife, "Oh yeah, it's roughly finished." I've got it there. And then there's that whole other phase of moving on to properly amp up the sentences and sometimes to move stuff around as well.

There's something about New York. You can get a nice feeling of belonging as a writer here. It's probably the best city on Earth like that. I miss the wisecracking of New York.

All sorts of things can keep one awake. But as you get older - this is what the stroke thing really brought home to me - this thing that I never paid attention to: my brain. I've always been conscious that, of course, after a night of getting stoned, my head would feel foggy; if I got drunk the night before I'd be hungover. But that was the extent of my concern about my brain. And then with the stroke thing, it made me realize, "God! That's my main source of income." So it relates actually to your other question about growing old.

I like these nonfiction books where everything that is interesting about them is lost in that catch-all description of their "about"-ness.

People say it's not what happens in your life that matters, it's what you think happened. But this qualification, obviously, did not go far enough. It was quite possible that the central event of your life could be something that didn't happen, or something you thought didn't happen. Otherwise there'd be no need for fiction, there'd only be memoirs and histories.

Life is bearable even when it's unbearable: that is what's so terrible, that is the unbearable thing about it.

I don't like my books being defined by their "about"-ness. So now the subtitle has just become a kind of strap-line on the cover.