8. Go down to the cellar. In the corner is the locker with the garden tools. Push it aside and lift up the granite slab underneath. There’s a metal box in the hole. Everything you find in it belongs to you. Including the photos.

9. There may be a war. There’s always a war somewhere, so why not here? There’s always some lunatic somewhere sitting at a button and fiddling with it. And it always takes a while for people to realize that he’s crazy. And I don’t mean crazy like Father Hoberg or Richard Regnier, who sometimes used to sit on the grass after work talking to the birds. I mean real madness. Madness that wears a tie and polished shoes. That nods at the bathroom mirror in the evening and can’t stop laughing because it knows it’s won again, it can’t lose, because it has nothing to lose. It’s a madness whose fingers are short and thin, too small to hurt another man but just big enough to press a button. Perhaps someone will recognize this madness, but by then it will be too late. So there may be a war. Now listen. No matter what they whisper to or yell at you, what they tempt or threaten you with: it’s not your war. You didn’t come into this world to end up lying in the mud somewhere with your belly split open. It’s not your war.

10. When you sit at the window in the morning and see the cars driving down the approach road outside, think about how lucky you are. You’ve got through the night, and you know more or less what to expect from the day. It’s not much, and that’s what’s good about it. You put your bare feet on the window ledge and feel the draught on your toes. A piece of plastic film hangs from the window frame and moves as though it were alive. You see your toes curling and stretching, and winter is still a long way off.

11. Trust no doctors.

12. Think of the dead and forgive them.

13. Look for friends. You can find them anywhere. On the street. On the next corner. At the petrol station, while you’re trying to unscrew the valve on your tyre. Anywhere. I think the secret is: you’ve got to be interested. The best friend I ever had in my life was my father. How is that possible? He was thirty-­­one years older than me.

14. Go to your mother and put your hand on her cheek. Stay like that for a moment. I never did, and that was a mistake.

15. Say: I love you! I know that to your ears it sounds idiotic and wrong. But not to theirs. I never said it. No idea why. I couldn’t. They asked me to. They expected it. They demanded it, again and again, but I couldn’t. They often said it. I love you! And then they wanted to hear it from me. I took the view that love wasn’t something you bartered, and I never said it. Not once. And that was almost certainly the biggest mistake of all.