“All I care about is that people who like me think I’m funny. I get on with writing pretty straight-down the line, old-fashioned stuff.”

Not since Ancient Greece have cities been thought of as the ideal living environment for humans. And that was so long ago it predates the invention of trousers.

I have quite good general knowledge and I had a very drilled education from an early age. I do know more than most people.

I come from a country where there’s a reputation for bad press.

A man of strong opinions is one thing. But a man whose strong opinions depend entirely on how he is feeling in that instant is a disastrous thing in a city of 10 million people just trying to muddle through.

In the beginning, we huddled in cities for our own protection.

At home, we have fish and greens, fish and greens – maybe salmon steak with curried lentils. No poncy cooking goes on, we don’t have dinner parties, we don’t entertain.

When I write I inhabit a personality that is and is not me.

There is nothing wrong with getting a bus. Nothing in any way demeaning about boarding a huge smelly communal vehicle that will rumble noisily and very slowly in the vague direction of the place you need to get to and then dump you half a mile away in the freezing wind and rain.

The notion of getting pleasure from food has gone too far; we can also get pleasure from anticipating a meal, and from not being quite sated.

My dad never really wrote what he thought. None of his inner rage and darkness and problems, which we all have, made it on to the page. For him, writing was a process of making everything appear funny.

I was 41 when I became a dad. I try to be as much fun as my father was, but I’m at home more – and less of a disciplinarian.

I tried to leave the city once, for one of those other places. And, my God, the silence. I could hear myself think, and found that I wasn’t. I am not designed to be lonely as a cloud.

I know more than most journalists. I know more than most columnists on big, important newspapers.

We’ve got rid of subeditors because we don’t need them. Because they were never necessary. They were just fetchers and gophers. They had a job, which has been superannuated by technology.

So what on Earth there isn’t to like about New York? I don’t know. But what you do also have is a load of very ordinary restaurants which you make a terrible fuss about which are really only very average. Which is fine. One doesn’t go to New York for the food.

Being a success in the world, having total control of one’s life, is about being able to take or leave things.

By all accounts I should be dead! The abuse I put my body through: the drugs, the alcohol, the lifestyle I’ve lived the last 30 years!

God has supplied all my needs and has not failed me once.

I learned that if I had known how much of this Nazi memorabilia there was to collect, I never would have started in the first place. It’s crowding me out of my house.

Biologically the species is the accumulation of the experiments of all its successful individuals since the beginning.

As in certain combinations so words and in all kinds of music; for melodies and cadences are beautiful; and minds that lift themselves above the realm of sense to a higher order are aware of beauty in the conduct of life.

You learn all the best stuff in life after you leave school.

First of all, you’ve got to have a vision of ‘What kind of program do I want to have?’ Then you’ve got to have a plan to implement it. Then you’ve got to set the example that you want, develop the principles and values that are important, and get people to buy into it.

You make yourself broad. You make yourself appealing. ‘Hey, y’all, I’m cool with everybody.’ That’s my message.