Every so often, I would come back to Raymond to reassure myself that even as I don’t even get a foothold into the fiction writing that I did when I was younger, I could still apply the creative rules that characterised his body of work - to life.

1. (on why his favourites were poems and short-stories) Get in, get out. Don’t linger. Go on.

2. A lot of writers have talent. But a unique and exact way of looking at things, and finding the right context for expressing that way of looking, that’s something else.

3. No (cheap) tricks or gimmicks.

4. A writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing - a sunset or an old shoe - in absolute and simple amazement.