I'm not precisely saying that a really good board meeting at the MLA (Museums Libraries and Archives Coucil) makes me want to go and write poetry but there is a pleasure in doing that sort of thing well.

If you are working 50 hours a week in a factory you don't have time to read 10 newspapers a day and go back to declassified government archives. But such people may have far-reaching insights into the way the world works.

I get uncomfortable when people give me presents and watch me open them. I don't have birthday parties because the idea of a group of people singing and looking at me while I'm blowing out candles gives me hives.

I hate birthdays. I hate birthday parties. I hate them. I don't know what it is anybody's only got to come wafting near me with a piece of cake with a candle on and I break out in hives.