Very complicated.

Loud and noisy.

Somewhat disconcerting, but not unpleasant.

Warmth and security.

I behaved badly with two old lovers. Years later, when I took one to lunch to apologise, it made it worse.

Since hostile people still call me a former Playboy Bunny, even at 82, I probably shouldn’t have done that in my youth, even to write an exposé. And since a couple of times they’ve also referred to me as a former CIA agent, because I went to two Soviet-era communist youth festivals, I probably shouldn’t have done that, either. Yet if I hadn’t done both, I might have judged other people by such empty symbols, too.

Dying just a millisecond before I was about to say something I really wanted the people I love to hear.

I’ve had cancer three times, but never felt close to death except when I walked between parked cars on my street and a car sped past my nose.

I haven’t done it yet.

In my 30s, I was staring at a pair of expensive boots in a shop window when the photographer Gordon Parks came up behind me. He instantly understood, because he grew up even poorer than me; he made me buy them on my credit card.