There ought, I thought, to be a ritual for being born twice - patched, retreaded and approved for the road.

I could feel the winter shaking my bones and banging my teeth together.

I thought how strange it had never occurred to me before that I was only purely happy until I was nine years old.

I felt like a racehorse in a world without racetracks or a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street and a business suit, his days of glory shrunk to a little gold cup on his mantel with a date engraved on it like the date on a tombstone.

I think if I had done anything else I would like to have been a doctor. This is the sort of polar opposition to being a writer, I suppose.

So learn about life. Cut yourself a big slice with the silver server, a big slice of pie. Open your eyes. Let life happen.

Every day one has to earn the name of 'writer' over again, with much wrestling.