It felt natural. That is what I remember most about becoming a father halfway through my 20s. As if Mother Nature was giving me the big thumbs up.

A tattoo doesn't make you look like an individual.

Largely this is a class thing - writers tend to be cosseted little middle-class kiddies who think that the world owes them a royalty cheque. But just doing it - being in your room for years on end, locked in your head, alone with invented ghosts - it weakens and softens the body. And I know I can't just live in my head.

I hate Nassau and the Bahamas. It's one of those places I'd always wanted to visit since reading Ian Fleming but it was full of casinos with Americans in shorts.

The British - who rarely start a fight, but always know how to finish it - have nothing to be ashamed of.

Home is oneness, home is my original nature. It is right here, simply in what is. There is nowhere else I have to go, and nothing else I have to become.

When you have a kid, money matters.