That your life is only in this very second.

We are too often advised to live life to the fullest. That’s too much pressure. The key is to find joy and poignancy in the quiet and mundane. Life is lived between the so-called big moments.

You’re going to come up against brick walls in life. You’ve got to go over them, under them, around them, or crash through them, but somehow or other you’ve got to get to the other side.

And now, weak, short of breath, my once-firm muscles melted away by cancer, I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual, but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life — achieving a sense of peace within oneself. I find my thoughts drifting to the Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh day of the week, and perhaps the seventh day of one’s life as well, when one can feel that one’s work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest.

The fear of nightmares.

Not understanding myself until I was in my 30s.

The greatest athlete we never knew we had.

On holiday in Spain with my family about 20 years ago. Sad, but true.

I did a corporate gig early in my career, and they opened the buffet in the middle of my set and everybody left.

I once had to sit on a sleigh and pretend to be Bing Crosby for a corporate party. I had to mime to White Christmas over and over again.