There are things in life we don't understand, and when we meet them, all we can do is let them alone.

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.

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.

We talked filth for a pleasant half hour.

We keep a journal to entrap that collection of selves that forms us, the individual human being.

In some ways, you could argue, television is doing far more interesting work than the movies. It's more fulfilling.

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