The good part of aging is that you read more and more. You discover poets you never heard of when you were younger.

I still regularly read New Scientist to try to keep up with quantum theory and cosmological discoveries and so forth. And I read National Geographic—that’s not a plug.

really watching a lot of work. Also finding the right people to associate with and learn from in terms of work.

At this school I was allowed to learn things which interested me: French, History, lots of Poetry by heart, and above all Riding and Swimming. The impression of those years makes a pleasant picture in my mind, in strong contrast to my earlier schoolday memories.

The book is done when you say it’s done. It’s entirely up to you. It’s your responsibility.

Anyhow, I think when you have a novel to write again, it will begin visiting you, whispering, “Write me.” Till then, no jumper cable, not even a lightning bolt, can bring it into being.

Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.

As many times as necessary. With one story or novel, this may be five false starts and six or eight or ten full rewrites, beginning to end. With the next, it may mean just going back through it and over it fiddling details until I think it’s as good as I can get it.

That's it. Mostly. Really, the people and the issues all come together in a sort of clump or knot, and writing the story is untying, unwinding the knot.

As I got up in my 70s, stories began coming to me more and more rarely. I finished the novel Lavinia at 78. I no longer have the stamina to undertake a new novel, even if I wanted to. So, here I am, an old writer who loves writing – what have I got left to do?