I Enjoy Doing Very High Mileages, Partly

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 Write Because I Feel Driven To Write. I Write From A Sense Of Inner Necessity. I Don't Write For Anything Other Than That.

If The Government Announced That It Was Going To Allocate A Vast Tranche Of Education Funding Purely To The Pupils At The Best Public Schools, There Would Be A National Outcry - And Yet This Is Precisely What The Olympics Represents In Terms Of Sports Funding.

People Tend To Think Of Their Lives As Having A Dramatic Arc, Because They Read Too Much Fiction.

We've Clearly Entered A Period In Which The Analog Of Text Is No Longer Important Or Relevant. All Text Will Be Electronic. I Accept That Fact. My House Has Thousands Of Books In It, And I've Started To Look At Them Completely Differently. They Now Seem To Me To Be Like Antiquarian Objects. Their Use Value Has Become Negligible To Me Because I'm Perfectly Happy To Read On An E-reader.