Stay out of other people’s business.

Before I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a year and a half ago, I rather jauntily told the readers of my memoirs that when faced with extinction I wanted to be fully conscious and awake, in order to “do” death in the active and not the passive sense. And I do, still, try to nurture that little flame of curiosity and defiance: willing to play out the string to the end and wishing to be spared nothing that properly belongs to a life span. However, one thing that grave illness does is to make you examine familiar principles and seemingly reliable sayings. And there’s one that I find I am not saying with quite the same conviction as I once used to: In particular, I have slightly stopped issuing the announcement that “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

Redemption. People can be redeemed, goals can be redeemed.

We are not here for long – try not to take everything too seriously.

They tend to say it behind my back.

Anything by Dostoevsky. I tried!

A great education.

I suspect it hasn’t happened yet.

A criminal pathologist. Then I saw a show called Quincy ME and realised I just wanted to play one on TV.

I don’t want to get into an early death spiral, when you’re scaling down your life unnecessarily because you’ve already been there or done that. I never want to stop adventuring.