I think whoever said that was just being clever. It is clever. It is amusing. But as it affects almost everybody in the human race, whether civilised or not, I think it’s a joke. It’s not to be taken seriously. I think one can be sick with love. One can be diverted and even destroyed by it. You can have people making the most extraordinary decisions as a consequence of either being in love or having been in love. You know, people change wills, dynasties divert left or right as a consequence of something going wrong with a love affair. But that it's an illness, no.

And I think when you talk of illness, this is something that you want to get rid of, but I think a man who has never loved has been deprived of an extraordinary experience. I mean... I think the sooner you fall in love, the earlier you fall in love, the better. The more often you fall in love, the better. Because I think that every human being is like a teapot, and there’s a spout and a handle and a lid and a knob on the lid and so on. And every love affair you have knocks off one of these, so that you end up just with the central carcass. We are all the central carcasses by the time we reach our age. I know you’re younger than me, but you do need to get your odd bits knocked off, one way or another, otherwise you don’t learn anything about yourself, or the human race.

So it’s all part of a rich experience, nothing to do with illness at all.