I Enjoy Doing Very High Mileages, Partly

If The Seventies Were Bulbous, And The Eighties Sharp, The Nineties Were Nothing But Bogus.

Don't Look Back Until You've Written An Entire Draft.

When Anyone Starts Out To Do Something Creative - Especially If It Seems A Little Unusual - They Seek Approval, Often From Those Least Inclined To Give It. But A Creative Life Cannot Be Sustained By Approval, Any More Than It Can Be Destroyed By Criticism - You Learn This As You Go On.

The High Arts Of Literature And Music Stand In A Curious Relationship To One Another, At Once Securely Comfortable And Deeply Uneasy - Rather Like A Long-term Marriage.

Well, I Wanted To Be A Philosopher, Which Is The Idlest Occupation In The World. I Wanted To Be Involved In Abstract Thought, But Because Of Various Problems With The Authorities I Wasn't Able To Pull That One Off. A Lifetime Of Idleness In Academia Would Have Really Suited Me. So I Was Thrown Out, As It Were. Other Than That, There Seemed No Possible Idle Occupations, So Writing . . . Although Writing Isn't Exactly Idleness. There's An Enormous Tension Between Indolence And Languor.