Particularly at around the age of 70 you reach a stage where you have to be very careful. If, at that point, you abandon the work you have been doing, there is a good chance that you will just collapse and drift.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When you get to a certain age, the work begins to thin out.
I have all this time between projects, and I'm not so sure that's a healthy thing. It's scary, because at 36 I'm woefully unqualified for anything else.
Novelists tend to go off at 70, and I'm in a funk about it, I've got myself into a real paranoid funk about it, how the talent dies before the body.
You just have this freedom when you're younger - this lack of concern to fail or do anything wrong. It comes with an ease that I've found has kind of deteriorated over time.
You have to push yourself when you're older because it's very easy to fall into the trap. You start to fall apart - you just have to do your best to paste yourself together. I think doing things and being active is very important. When your mind is busy, you don't hurt so much.
I'm the oldest 26-year-old I know. A lot of experience has been crammed into a short amount of time. Some days I feel a good 65, 70. Like I want to lie down.
When I was young, I was just about hard work. But as I got older, I did experience anxiety, doubt, judgment, and it's so easy to lose yourself for a second.
Apart from writing books, my 40s have been about pursuing personal growth. Whatever were the mistakes of my earlier life, I've been committed to a pause, a regroup. I don't want to make the same mistakes in the future.
If I was a little bit younger I would worry more. I'd want to do one thing at a time but now I try to do a bunch of different things at a time if I can.
On stage, I think I'm 35. Working takes over my whole body and I become a younger man - that's why I won't stop.