It only takes a room of Americans for the English and Australians to realise how much we have in common.

If you think you're going to have an eternity in which you can talk to Mozart and Chopin and Schopenhauer on a cloud and learn stuff and you know really get to grips with knowledge and understanding and so you won't bother now, I think it's a terrible, a terrible mistake.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will always hurt me. Bones mend and become actually stronger in the very place they were broken and where they have knitted up; mental wounds can grind and ooze for decades and be re-opened by the quietest whisper.

I like to think of myself at home in the armchair, writing, smoking and occasionally wandering down the shop.

Hell, I am young. I am free. My teeth are clean. The sun shines. To hell with everything else

Now, bipolar disorder, it goes on a spectrum. There's very severe conditions of it and there are milder ones. I'm lucky enough that it's reasonably mild in my case.

Mankind can live free in a society hemmed in by laws, but we have yet to find a historical example of mankind living free in lawless anarchy.