I'm not up at 6 am. I start listening to the incoming news at 6 am. I'm not up until 7. By then I've heard the agricultural news, the news and financial news and listening to radio. Lying in bed relaxing. Quite busy after one has got up. There's quite a lot to put away from the night before, last night's papers to finish off, getting up and seeing what I have for the day. And just getting my thoughts in order for the day. I have very little breakfast. It tends to be a rather busy time because there's a rather lot going on.

As many of you know, I observe specific protocols to open the creative mind – I sit at a desk in my office and write, working exclusively between 9am and 5pm. Within ‘office hours’ I find my mind becomes genuinely free, and I feel a creativity that is qualitatively richer than anything I may experience outside of this time, in the disorder and distraction of the ordinary world. For me, what must appear to some as forced labour is where all the imaginative mischief, beauty, and love are free to happen. Freedom finds itself in captivity.

I begin each morning, I do every single morning exactly the same way, I begin each morning by doing my highest priority work first. I have a very clear priority list and I start from the highest priority work first. Before I even get to work, my day is already a success. I've already completed my most important work and can dedicate my day to helping others.

I would want to be a role model. As you talk about an athlete who wakes up at seven every day, then you have two training sessions...for me, it's not like that. I definitely think about chess all the time. I work at chess every day but it's not like I have a routine. It's always been based on inspiration for me. Fortunately, I haven't run out of inspiration yet...Sometimes I play better when I haven't slept that much, because you kind of play more creative.

I, at first, thought I didn’t have a ritual, but then I remembered that I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark—it must be dark—and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come. And she said, “Well, that’s a ritual.” And I realized that for me this ritual comprises my preparation to enter a space that I can only call nonsecular … For me, light is the signal in the transition. It’s not being in the light, it’s being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense.