We received death threats, yes, but you see when you are in a struggle, there are going to have to be casualties, and why should you be exempt? But I often said, “Look, here, God, if I’m doing your work, then you jolly well are going to have to look after me!” And God did God’s stuff.

At first I - I felt that it was confined to my liver and that they had - the operation had completely removed it. And so I felt quite relieved. And then that same afternoon we had an MRI of my head and neck and it showed up that it was already in four places in my brain. So I would say that night and the next day, until I came back up to Emory, I just thought I had a few weeks left. But I was surprisingly at ease. You know, I've had a wonderful life. I've had thousands of friends and I've had an exciting and adventurous and gratifying existence. So I was surprisingly at ease, much more so than my wife was.

Did the Victorians fear death? As Death says in one of my own books, most men don't fear death, they fear those things – the knife, the shipwreck, the illness, the bomb – that proceed, by micro seconds if you're lucky and many years if you're not, the moment of death.

Yes, these are subjects that we think about all the time but don’t necessarily talk about. Everybody has thought about if they want to be cremated, buried, or whatever.

Watching seeds grow in the greenhouse. Drawing or reading or cooking.

Probably when our children were small, which is not to say I am unhappy now.

I admire the mother of my children a great deal, because she’s interesting, smart and funny.

When I was an idiot high school student, as opposed to being an idiot adult, I used to drive very fast.

That they’re kind, trustworthy, smart, and can hear and communicate and aren’t afraid to do so.