Senior Citizen' and 'Silver Surfer' are the new euphemisms. Unless you're a female presenter on TV, in which case you're ready for the knacker's yard at 35.

My parents spent an awful lot of money sending me to the best possible schools, and I came out of my exams and thought, 'I don't really want to do a degree.' I did philosophy with the Jesuits for about a year, and then I joined a bank. While I was there, I saw an ad in an Irish paper for radio announcers.

Just as you should never confuse the law with common justice, intelligence should not be confused with common sense. Some of the brightest people in the world have no idea how to cross the road.

My father was always slightly bemused by my success. Although he knew that I had reasonable intelligence, he always thought that I was a little bit lazy.

I ask questions. I watch the world. And what I have discovered is that the parts of my fiction that people most tell me are 'unbelievable' are those that are most closely based on the real, those least diluted by my imagination.

In film, you can create the illusion of time and space. People speak; characters reveal their feelings. You can use music, which informs how you should be feeling, and it carries you to the right emotional space.

I think when your imagination goes to work, and when you're first bullied, you feel like you're going to die. School becomes a war zone, and you can't function.

To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must be able to guess what will interest; we must learn to read the childish soul as we might a piece of music. Then, by simply changing the key, we keep up the attraction and vary the song.