You're always in a rush, or else you're too exhausted to have a proper conversation. Soon enough, the long hours, the traveling, the broken sleep have all crept into your being and become part of you, so everyone can see it, in your posture, your gaze, the way you move and talk.

Perhaps one day, all these conflicts will end, and it won't be because of great statesmen or churches or organisations like this one. It'll be because people have changed. They'll be like you, Puffin. More a mixture. So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy.

When I see films made from books, I make a huge effort not to remember the book. It's important to see the film as a film.

What is pertinent is the calmness of beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it.

If you look at my last songs and first short stories, there is a real connection between them.

You need to remember that. If you’re to have decent lives, you have to know who you are and what lies ahead of you, every one of you.

After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?