I love the way you can fall in love with a piece of literature how words alone can get your heart doing that.

I need some isolation, it's necessary to me, that's just who I am. I need to be left alone.

I've been quite fascinated by the relative insignificance of human existence, the shortness of life. We might as well be a letter in a word in a sentence on a page in a book in a library in a city in one country in this enormous universe! And that kind of fear and insignificance has kept me awake at night.

I get up, go and get a coffee, and go do the crossword - I'm loyal to one particular paper, the 'Guardian' - and that's my idea of a perfect morning.

The romanticised life, where all the great poetry and music and art of the world comes from, is great but it requires a lot of self-indulgence.