Give me the comma of imperfect striving, thus to find zest in the immediate living. Ever the reaching but never the gaining, ever the climbing but never the attaining of the mountain top.

I have been under considerable pressure to buy at least a laptop computer. I have always turned the suggestions down for the reason that I have never done creative work on a typewriter. There is to me a lack of empathy.

I have never been clever enough - or egotistical enough to spend 300 pages dipping into the sludge of my own subconscious.

Perfection is a full stop.

When I began to write Poldark I drew on this part of my life as in another dimension.