ANDREW DENTON: The likes of Kurt Vonnegut have lionised you, you've been invited to speak at the UN. Are you comfortable with success, what appears to be success?

LEE STRINGER: I'm comfortable with the real part of the success, which is gaining by inches on an inner serenity. That's success. All the human soul really wants to do is to gain a bit each day, it doesn't want to lose a bit each day. We want to grow. We want Tuesday to be a little better than Monday, as it should be. Instead, we mostly go the other way, and we all suffer from that. So that success I enjoy, the rest is noise.

-- Transcript: Andrew Denton interviews Lee Stringer, Enough Rope, ABC