And I've been wearing specs since I was three.

The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.

While I am on, I can discipline myself to that extent. When I am off, I can't discipline myself at all. On the other hand, when I am off, there are so many things I like doing, it doesn't really matter.

Maybe half a dozen think they are a community, but, in general terms, I think English writers tend to face outwards, away from each other, and write in their own patch, as it were.

I'm not a critic so much of my own writing. People must make up their own minds over that.

Are we savages or what?

Life's scientific, but we don't know, do we? Not certainly, I mean.