What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

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.

That this was true, I owe to Montaigne. I can’t remember when I read, or was told, that he considered it a good thing to spend a short time every day thinking about death, thus getting used to its inevitability and coming to understand that something inevitable is natural and can’t be too bad, but it was in my early teens, and it struck me as a sensible idea. Of course I didn’t set out to think about death in a regular way every day, but I did think about it quite often, and sure enough, it worked.

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.

Well, I—I've experienced that the stroke was grace. It was grace, for me, to play, to get inside, grace. I was dependent. These are things that I—those, those were graceful things. You know, pushed. And just go inside, to be—you're a quote "author" and it's a cultural thing, that role, to get into your head. But it's a head game. It's a head game. And I wanted to get down to my spiritual identity. And the stroke placed me at the spiritual identity.

You only get out what you put in. Karma – it all comes round.

Not to take anything for granted.

To live your best life every day, because tomorrow isn’t promised.

To not be afraid, to stand there and be strong and loving and honest.

Give, give, give. The more you give, the happier you are.

Do the secret thing you know you were born to do.

Be generous and kind. Honestly, those two things did everything for me.

Life is never fair.

We’re not here for long so don’t be wreaking havoc along the way.

Stay out of other people’s business.

Shakespeare said, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” – I think that’s true.

That it will go on quite happily without me.

Showing up is at least 90% of it.

Keep working, improving your step.

Don’t answer every question you’re asked.