That is because at the close of the day the ship we sail in is the soul, not the body.

I rose and moved towards him. You would have done the same yourself. It is an ancient matter. Something propels you towards sudden grief, or perhaps also sometimes repels. You move away. I moved towards it, I couldn't help it.

He loved telling stories. He had been everywhere in the world. The northwest frontier, the landscape of the Hindu Kush, was one of the great landscapes of my childhood because he used to evoke it with his stories. He taught me the sequence of ranks in the British army when I was about eight. I was in the bed with him while he told me everything about his life - except, probably, the real things, because of course you couldn't go there.

And whatever my life had been up to that day, it was another life after that. And that is the gospel truth.

I haven't really written my plays and books - I've heard them. The stories are there already, singing in your genes and in your blood.

What is the sound of an eighty-nine-year-old heart breaking?

There is seldom a difficulty with religion where there is friendship.