My actual childhood, as opposed to my adolescence, was not spent in London.

The Normal is the good smile in a child’s eyes - all right. It is also the dead stare in a million adults.

All reined up in old language and old assumptions, straining to jump clean-hoofed on to a whole new track of being I only suspect is there. I can't see it, because my educated, average head is being held at the wrong angle. I can't jump because the bit forbids it, and my own basic force - my horsepower, if you like - is too little.

Tragedy, for me, is not a conflict between right and wrong, but between two different kinds of right.

Watching Italian opera, all those male sopranos screeching, stupid fat couples rolling their eyes about. That's not love, it's just rubbish.

What was evident was that Mozart was simply transcribing music completely finished in his head. And finished as most music is never finished. Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and structure would fall. I was staring through the cage of those meticulous ink strokes at Absolute Beauty.

I think people nowadays do tend to blame their parents for everything.