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.

You might call this innocence. I had a sense of another world that had not been spoken of to me.

I would say that, apart from being a writer, I have also always been very conscious of the idea of a 'world elsewhere'.

If future history is not to be just one damned thing after another in space, then what we really have to do is in some way overcome this linear experience of time that makes all existence a quest for something that will never be found.And philosophies such as Zen seem to hint that this is possible.

I've drifted in and out of vegetarianism for years.

I grew up with tarot cards and the reading of tea leaves.

I think the seventies caught the last red rays of the dying sun of this innocence, but were already a little cold and drab.