There is a continuity about the garden and an order of succession in the garden year which is deeply pleasing, and in one sense there are no breaks or divisions - seed time flows on to flowering time and harvest time; no sooner is one thing dying than another is coming to life.

Books help to form us. If you cut me open, you will find volume after volume, page after page, the contents of every one I have ever read, somehow transmuted and transformed into me just as my genes and the soul within me make me uniquely me, so I am the unique sum of the books I have read. I am my literary DNA.

Some people make tunes, but it is lines that run like moving messages through my head. Whatever else I am saying and doing often has no bearing on this inner, verbal life.

Ghost stories ... tell us about things that lie hidden within all of us, and which lurk outside all around us.

I like going into a school matinee. I like to be behind the stage because there's a spy-hole and what you see is the best moment in all theatre.

Of all human activities, apart from the procreation of children, gardening is the most optimistic and hopeful. The gardener is by definition one who plans for and believes and trusts in a future, whether in the short or the longer term.

I have sat here at my desk, day after day, night after night, a blank sheet of paper before me, unable to lift my pen, trembling and weeping too.