I always saw Michael Gambon wearing madly psychedelic socks, and I always thought that's it is one of the few areas where men can really express colour and have a bit of a dandyish quality to their outfit.
The enemy for the fanatic is pleasure, which makes it extremely important to continue to indulge in pleasure. Dance madly. That is how you get rid of terrorism.
Madly, futilely, I wrote novel after novel, eight in all, that failed to find a publisher. I persisted because for me the novel was the supreme literary form - not just one among many, not a relic of the past, but the way we communicate to one another the subtlest truths about this business of living.
Though not a natural world by any means, more like a collection of living dioramas, a zoo exists in its own time zone, somewhere between the seasonal sense of animals and our madly ticking watch time.
I studied to be a chef as a side thing, a little hobby that I enjoyed doing, but I ended up falling madly in love with the food and the lifestyle.