When you’re younger you confuse love with chaos and passion and, as I’ve gotten older, I realise that love is the opposite: it’s peace and it feels safe, like home.

A dog bounding through the grass on a summer’s day chasing a squirrel.

It’s like digging a field together: it’s hard work, not very glamorous, but you can stand back and think, “We did that.”

Comforting, uplifting, all consuming.

I was going to be a journalist. But after the war I studied anthropology, just in order to become educated. I thought it was worth knowing the science of man. I still intended to become a journalist, but there were no jobs, because the reporters who had gone to war were coming back and were entitled to their jobs, and the women who had replaced them were damned if they’d leave, and they shouldn’t have left.

I don’t fucking know. I keep thinking I’ll die. Why do you think I smoke so much?

Well, again, getting back to Nietzsche’s statement, as a person of deep faith, I obviously believe in something in the end. I don’t know what it is, but it’s a great big something.

Yes, well, I’ve already said so in the books: “Everything was beautiful, nothing hurt.”

Fine, thank you. I am quite recovered. It was almost a near-death experience. Things weren't going so well for a little while, but I feel strong again.

I don’t much want to play anymore. I enjoyed the game as a young man, but I don’t enjoy it now.