As The Render Is To The Building,

There Is Something Mysteriously Powerful That Can Happen When Young, Inchoate Minds Come Into Contact With Older And More Worldly Ones In A Spirit Of Intellectual And Creative Endeavour - If I Believed In Progress, I Suppose That's What I'd Call It.

Ideologists Of All Kinds Find A Strange Sort Of Comfort In The Madness Of The Crowd; It Confirms Them In Their Suspicion That History, Far From Being Made By The Great Mass Of Individuals - As Marx Averred - Is Rather Unmade By A Single Massive Individual, A Collective Other, Who Stands In Stark Contrast To You And He.

Is There Anything More Useless Than A Crouton? I Sometimes Wake Up In The Small Hours With A Start And Realise That What's Roused Me Is An Overpowering Urge To Visit Violence On Its Originator.

Well, I Wanted To Be A Philosopher, Which Is The Idlest Occupation In The World. I Wanted To Be Involved In Abstract Thought, But Because Of Various Problems With The Authorities I Wasn't Able To Pull That One Off. A Lifetime Of Idleness In Academia Would Have Really Suited Me. So I Was Thrown Out, As It Were. Other Than That, There Seemed No Possible Idle Occupations, So Writing . . . Although Writing Isn't Exactly Idleness. There's An Enormous Tension Between Indolence And Languor.

I Enjoy Doing Very High Mileages, Partly Out Of Masochism And Also Because I Like To Feel The Shape Of The Landscape.