“It is one of the enjoyments of retirement that you are able to drift through the day at your own pace, easy in the knowledge that you have put hard work and achievement behind you.”

Sometimes I get so immersed in my own company, if I unexpectedly run into someone I know, it’s a bit of a shock and takes me a while to adjust.

There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable.

But then, I suppose, when with the benefit of hindsight one begins to search one’s past for such ‘turning points’, one is apt to start seeing them everywhere.

And I’m a Hailsham student – which is enough by itself sometimes to get people’s backs up.

There comes a point when you can more or less count the number of books you’re going to write before you die.

Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers.

She always wanted to believe in things.

I think of my pile of old paperbacks, their pages gone wobbly, like they’d once belonged to the sea.

I like the fact that by mimicking the way memory works, a writer can actually write in a fluid way – one solid scene doesn’t have to fall on another solid scene, you can just have a fragment that then dovetails into another one that took place 30 years apart from it.

What is pertinent is the calmness of beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it.

Indeed — why should I not admit it? — in that moment, my heart was breaking.

There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.

Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory.

I really have to think of the things fiction can do that film can’t and play to the strengths of the novel. With a novel you can get right inside somebody’s head.

I think there is a huge difference between writers who have very big sales, and writers who have small sales. Even writers with very high reputations, even Nobel prize winners, often sell in very low figures.

My friends and I took songwriting very, very seriously. My hero was and still is Bob Dylan, but also people like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and that whole generation.

I think a lot of parents live their lives through the kids. Because they didn’t make it [achieve something], they want their kids to make it. It puts a lot of undue pressure on the kids.

Over the years, I have observed that nearly all high achievers know how to make good of those 1440 minutes in each day.

I have always been more interested in experiment, than in accomplishment.

Stop criticizing yourself for your failures. Start appreciating yourself for your achievements.

A vision has to be within reach not in the air. It has to be achievable.

Over the years, I have observed that nearly all high achievers know how to make good of those 1440 minutes in each day.

I share all that I know with everyone. I am happy when others achieve.

We have a lot of freedom to express ourselves. When you see us playing on the field, I guess you can make that out. This batting unit, especially, is fearless. We want to go out there and achieve the best possible result.