There can't be that many individual souls. Not souls like mine. There isn't room. There can't be.

Somehow, as a writer, you tend to use words to paper over structural cracks.

Old Professors never die, they just lose their faculties.

Life is sometimes novel-shaped, mocking the efforts of those authors who, in an effort to make their novels life-shaped, spurn the easy symmetry and cheap resonance of reality.

Living with bipolar, schizophrenia or any other mental condition takes a recognition that one has a chronic condition that needs managing. The management can be through pharmaceutical intervention, talk therapy, mindfulness programmes, diet and exercise changes, all kinds of things.

I'm afraid I was very much the traditionalist. I went down on one knee and dictated a proposal which my secretary faxed over straight away.

You don't need a Harvard MBA to know that the bedroom and the boardroom are just two sides of the same ballgame.