From the moment I resolved and reconciled things with Gail the fear went. I don't feel I've got any fear now. I think acceptance is the key. If you accept death, fear disappears.

I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

But if I was sitting in an armchair with bits and pieces of rubber sticking out of me and my son came over and said, you know, would you like a banana? Wink once for yes, wink twice for no, I dont think the interest of the conversation would get me past the sense that this is horrible. It's horrible for me but above all, horrible for them. There are things worse than death.

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. I am grateful for the gifts of intelligence, love, wonder and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.

Getting too involved in too many things. It eats your brain.

At what age? It’s been a long path. I’ll stick with Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell. (“Someday I’d like to try a book like that,” I said to myself, “only with a female narrator. It would of course be quite different.”)

The only way out is through.

Block? Not as such, but I've had to throw things out because they weren't working. Sometimes I just get lazy, but that's not the same a s a block.

At this age? A batty old lady wandering around talking to herself? But I do that anyway. Oh, you mean what would I have been. Maybe a botanist. If so, I’d be genetically engineering drought-resistant crops right now. Either that, or sentient fungi. (I know, I know, Mr. Sheldrake: they’re already sentient. So, more sentient.)

Can't pick and choose, it's bad luck.