Not to take anything for granted.

Yes. I'm not unhappy about becoming old. I'm not unhappy about what must be. It makes me cry only when I see my friends go before me and life is emptied. I don't believe in an afterlife, but I still fully expect to see my brother again. ... But, you know, there's something I'm finding out as I'm aging that I am in love with the world. And I look right now, as we speak together, out my window in my studio and I see my trees and my beautiful, beautiful maples that are hundreds of years old, they're beautiful. And you see I can see how beautiful they are. I can take time to see how beautiful they are. It is a blessing to get old. It is a blessing to find the time to do the things, to read the books, to listen to the music.

I think I actually wrote it in one of my poems is that my decline has been the making of me - I forget how I put it. Yeah, simply more reflective. I haven't got the excuse of moving forward just on impulse anymore, which I did, I think, for a long, long time.

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.

Overcooking pasta for my Italian family in Napoli – they would kill me.

As a nice and fair guy who helped bring authentic Italian cooking to the UK.

I am always very happy in Sardinia with my family; I spend at least six months of the year there. Six months working and six months relaxing – I think that is a great balance.

I wanted to be a footballer at first, like any other Neapolitan kid.

I would have spent more time with my parents. I did see them often, but you don’t realise how much you’ll miss someone or something until it’s gone.

That Italy didn’t qualify for the World Cup this year.