I, a late riser, fantasise about getting up every morning at 5 A.M. to fetch the horses in from the fields.

She frowned at him. 'You are in love with solitude.' 'Is there a better cure for the world than solitude?

I'm a century old, an impossible age, and my brain has no anchor in the present. Instead it drifts, nearly always to the same shore. Today, as most days, it is 1962. The year I discovered love.

I'd like to think life has improved since 1850, despite the long hours we all seem to spend slaving over hot computers, but the psychological journeys remain the same - the search for love, identity, a meaningful place in the world.

A piano might fall on your head, he said, but it also might not. And in the meantime you never know. Something nice might happen.

While working in advertising, I channelled my creative energy into elaborate escape fantasies: cake making, dog breeding, the Peace Corps.

The things that break your heart when you think there`s nothing left to break