Sometimes The Crowd Is The Madness -

Here We Meet, On The Page, Naked And Unadorned: Shorn Of Class, Race, Gender, Sexual Identity, Age And Nationality.

Sometimes The Crowd Is The Madness - At Others It's The Absence Of The Crowd That Is.

The High Arts Of Literature And Music Stand In A Curious Relationship To One Another, At Once Securely Comfortable And Deeply Uneasy - Rather Like A Long-term Marriage.

The Marvellous Thing About Writing, Whether It Be Fiction Or Journalism, Is That It Is Simultaneously The Most Intimate And The Most Anonymous Of Meetings Between People. It Is Profoundly Intimate In Reaching Into The Psyche Of Another, At The Same Time As Being Devoid Of Social Characteristics, Cultural Characteristics, Economic Characteristics.

There's A Flip Side To Having Prominent Public Intellectuals, Which Is That They Start Meddling In Politics And Often With Quite Disastrous Results.