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

It's interesting, the sense of pastoral utopia that exists in so much fantasy - in [Edward ] Dunsany, [John R.R.] Tolkien and so on.

I'm not an expert here. I'm talking about an experience I had rather than something I intellectually worked out. From what I can gather, the original mystery religions are still, largely, as the name suggests, mysterious. But they are associated with intoxication, fertility and resurrection.

1977 was also, of course, the year that Derek Jarman made his iconoclastic film Jubilee, which was so much part of the punk movement.

If there is innocence on Earth again, I tend to imagine it in more [Henry David]Thoreau sort of terms.

My muse can take the form of a landscape, an era, a style of writing, a piece of music, and, perhaps that which I find strangest of all for a muse, a human female. Of course, she's also adept at taking the form of toothless old Japanese men or young English lads with tattoos.

When we fail to live up to our ideals, for instance, we might begin to wonder who we are - most people are aware of a discrepancy, I think. There are idiosyncrasies and foibles, but we're not sure if these are essential. Some people think they are the most essential things of all.