Largely this is a class thing - writers tend to be cosseted little middle-class kiddies who think that the world owes them a royalty cheque. But just doing it - being in your room for years on end locked in your head alone with invented ghosts - it weakens and softens the body. And I know I can't just live in my head.

Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture as the little creep through the great break through and the middle-sized are alone entangled in it.

I don't know much about only children. I was the middle one of three and if ever I was alone with mum and dad it was a rare moment.

The biggest opportunity in 2013 is in Africa. It has seven out of the ten fastest-growing economies in the world. In Nigeria alone there are 100 million people with mobile phones. In total 300 million Africans - five times the population of Britain - are in the middle class.

Now suddenly there was nothing but a world of cloud and we three were there alone in the middle of a great white plain with snowy hills and mountains staring at us and it was very still but there were whispers.

I like to be alone so I can write. But focus can hurt you. I don't want to be some stress casualty in early middle age.

For students today only 10 percent of children from working-class families graduate from college by the age of 24 as compared to 58 percent of upper-middle-class and wealthy families.

I never felt totally 100% patriotically English... I'd seen a lot of the world by an early age - sort of spent a lot of time traveling around Lebanon and I'd seen Babylon and Damascus and all sorts of places in the Middle East by the time I was ten. Then we'd return to Ruslip in West London... Done a fair bit of traveling really.

Middle age is when your broad mind and narrow waist begin to change places.

The chief role of the universities is to prolong adolescence into middle age at which point early retirement ensures that we lack the means or the will to enforce significant change.