The English Can Laugh And

I Just Wanted To Be An Ordinary, Middle-class Person. When I Was At Cambridge I Made Great Efforts To Lose The Last Remnants Of My Cockney Accent.

I Don't Find Myself Interesting As A Person And The Details I Find Boring, Quite Frankly. You Could Sum It Up In A Few Words Or Sentences Really: Came From Nothing. Self-educated. Luck. Energy. Curiosity. Ambition. That's It. Nothing At All Can Illuminate The Work As Far As I Can Tell.

The English Can Laugh And At The Same Time Strike You Down, Without The Least Compunction. It Is The Secret Of Their Success As A Nation.

Oh, I Just Tend To Believe In Things When I'm Writing Them. For Instance, When I Was Writing 'doctor Dee,' I Believed In Magic. And When I Wrote 'hawksmoor' I Believed In Psychic Geography. But As Soon As I Type The Last Full Stop, I'm Back To Being A Complete Blank Again.

To Watch King Lear Is To Approach The Recognition That There Is Indeed No Meaning In Life, And That There Are Limits To Human Understanding.