I have teken refuge in the doctrine that advises one not to seek tranquility in certainty but in permanently suspended judgement.

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.

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

There is a disconnect between the film Bond and the literary Bond which is their contemporaneity. I don't suffer from that.

When you experience bereavement at a youngish age, you suddenly realise that life is unjust and unfair, that bad things will happen, and you have to take that on board.

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