All our lives are symbols. Everything we do is part of a pattern we have at least some say in. The strong make their own patterns and influence other people's, the weak have their courses mapped out for them. The weak and the unlucky, and the stupid.

Smell is a very animal thing, almost reptilian, where the more cerebral things like reading less so.

Intellectual achievement. The exercise of skill. Human feeling.

In theory, I work an eight-hour day and a five-day week which means I can socialise with my pals who mostly have normal jobs like teaching and computer programming.

I just come up with the stories and write them as well as I can. There's not really a great deal of strokey-beard thinking going on.

I'm an only child so am happy with my own company and I don't really get lonely.

I just took [my cancer diagnosis] as bad luck, basically. It did strike me almost immediately, my atheist sort of thing kicked in and I thought "ha, if I was a God-botherer, I'd be thinking, why me God? What have I done to deserve this?" and I thought at least I'm free of that, at least I can simply treat it as bad luck and get on with it.