What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

It occurred to me that at one point it was like I had two diseases – one was Alzheimer's and the other was knowing I had Alzheimer's. There were times when I thought I'd have been much happier not knowing, just accepting that I'd lost brain cells and one day they'd probably grow back or whatever. It is better to know, though, and better for it to be known, because it has got people talking, which I rather think was what I had in mind.

A 'no' is free.

I think the only life experience that I have to offer out of this is something we all know in the abstract but don't experience in practice very much. That is that you can survive an awful lot of bad stuff, so long as your mind is intact. I'm afraid that's the only life experience I have to offer.

I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.

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.”

That we are all no more and no less than a single thread in a gigantic web of life. What we do and how we behave has repercussions for the entire web.

To stay in the moment and live each day to the maximum. You never know when it’s going to be taken away.

That you’re stronger than you think you are.

Follow your dream and never give up, because it’s not over until the fat lady sings. Ride the adventure!

Don’t overcook pasta.

Never be rigid in your thinking, be open.

That it’s impossible to persuade other people of the value of the lessons that life has taught you.

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.

You’re going to come up against brick walls in life. You’ve got to go over them, under them, around them, or crash through them, but somehow or other you’ve got to get to the other side.

Living life to the full, not having regrets and not trying to plan your future too much. Just enjoy every minute.

When something is half price in a supermarket, always find out why.

That further lessons await.

The world doesn’t consist of bad and good people; it consists of people seeing things in a different way.

Life’s too short to take offence.

Evolve or perish.