In your teens and twenties, death doesn't exist. In your thirties, you glance down the road occasionally. But then in your forties, it becomes a full-time job looking the other way.

My family went to Toronto to visit relatives when I was 13 or 14. It was the first time we had ever been abroad. This was the early Eighties, and I remember the impossible glamour of air travel - my mum spending days trying to decide what she was going to wear on the plane.

I'm very fond of Glasgow, particularly the West End. The whole stretch of the west coast of Scotland from Loch Lomond up through Mallaig to the Kyle of Localsh is so beautiful.

John Niven Quotes