She [me muse] feels most at home in autumn, nonetheless, she is glad of the other seasons and loves them all. Without the others she would be unable to feel most at home in autumn, besides which, she almost feels most at home in all of them.

I associate my childhood with two things, mainly: the North Devon countryside and a sense of connection to another world.

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

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.

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.

The cultural products of America from this period [ fifties and sixties] are like a vision of paradise or something. I find it utterly intoxicating.

[My muse] is, in fact, a woman of the world, and precisely because of this, hopes that a diversity of cultures will endure, and that one bland monoculture does not swamp everything.