The quality of that 'who I am', is what I hope comes out in the writing.

I seem to be less depressed but also less hopeful now in my thirties. My widow's peak bothers me. I think a lot about the end of the human race. And so on.

People didn't talk about paedophiles in the seventies, I don't think.

I seemed to recall some words from an old Zen master, something like, "My Zen cuts down mountains." My rejection of Buddhism was a cutting down of mountains; that is precisely how it felt to me.

The peculiar thing is that, in focusing only on the here and now, Buddhism seems to despise the world.

I suppose what I can say is that I do feel I have a natural spiritual sensibility.

We're all more or less interested in the 'swinging sixties', of course, but that's not what I mean. I'm interested in the particular naive glamour that clings to the post-war and pre-Hendrix era.