Well, I Like The Rain Before It

I Was Going To Say 'my Friend Stuart', But I Suppose He's Not A Friend Any More. I Seem To Have Lost A Number Of Friends In The Last Few Years. I Don't Mean That I've Fallen Out With Them, In Any Dramatic Way. We've Just Decided Not To Stay In Touch. And That's What It's Been: A Decision, A Conscious Decision, Because It's Not Difficult To Stay In Touch With People Nowadays, There Are So Many Different Ways Of Doing It. But As You Get Older, I Think That Some Friendships Start To Feel Increasingly Redundant. You Just Find Yourself Asking, "what's The Point?" And Then You Stop.

My Only Regret Is That I Signed Away The World Rights And In America They've Been Far And Away My Most Successful Books, But I Never Saw A Cent From Any Of It.

Contemporary Britain Seems An Endlessly Fascinating Place To Me - But If I Knew A Little Bit More About Other Places, And Other Times, Maybe It Wouldn't.

We Say, 'shall We Meet For A Drink?', As Though Drinking Were The Main End Of The Appointment, And The Matter Of Company Only Incidental, We Are So Shy About Admitting Our Need For One Another.[...]we Say, 'would You Like To Come For Some Coffee?', As Though It Were Less Frightening To Acknowledge That We Are Heavily Dependent On Mildly Stimulating Drinks, Than To Acknowledge That We Are At All Dependent On The Companionship Of Other People.

I Have Two Ideas For Novels At The Moment, Neither Of Them All That Conventional, But I'm Not Ready To Choose Between Them Yet, Let Alone Settle Down To The Process Of Writing.