Memory is often - perhaps usually - a distorting lens: what we think we remember isn't the way it was at all. It's what we'd like to remember.

Life is all about seating and lighting.

Christopher Hitchens was a wit, a charmer, and a troublemaker, and to those who knew him well, he was a gift from - dare I say it - God.

Arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence. Not a pretty cocktail of personality traits in the best of situations. No sirree. Not a pretty cocktail in an office-mate and not a pretty cocktail in a head of state. In fact, in a leader, it's a lethal cocktail.

Where past generations had film cameras, scrapbooks, notebooks, and that part of the brain which stores memories, we now have a smartphone app for every conceivable recording need. The thing is, all that time you spend logging and then curating the quotidian aspects of your daily life is time taken away from actually doing things.

There aren't any looks or customs I wish would come back. Today almost anything goes. Culture constantly devours the past so there's not much that's missing.

I might wear a dinner jacket once a year to our Oscar party - that's a big thing - but I don't go to parties. I'm social but I'm not a socialite person.