The only times we are consciously aware of the authorship of a photograph, I would argue, are when we contemplate the photographs we ourselves have taken (or those of friends and family) or when we go deliberately to the photographers monograph or exhibition. The signed image - the appropriated, the owned image - is by far the rarest in this pullulating world of pictures.

It's true: lives do drift apart for no obvious reason. We're all busy people,we can't spend our time simply trying to stay in touch. The test of a friendship is if it can weather these inevitable gaps.

I tend to admire dead people more than the living. All too often, human reality diminishes the glowing reputation.

With film, you have very limited tools to convey subjectivity - voiceover, the camera's point of view, good acting - but even the very best actor in the world is crude by comparison with what you can do in a written paragraph.

To live as an artist requires hard work or some extraordinary good fortune to come your way.

We never love anyone. Not really. We only love our idea of another person. It is some conception of our own that we love. We love ourselves, in fact.

Is that a good definition of marking the ageing watershed? That moment when you realize - quite rationally, quite unemotionally - that the world in the not-so-distant future will not contain you: that the trees you planted will continue growing but you will not be there to see them.