You are safe with me." "I am not at all safe, with you. But I have no desire to be elsewhere.

The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.

History, writing, infect after a time a man's sense of himself.

Louis de Bernires is in the direct line that runs through Dickens and Evelyn Waugh. . .he has only to look into his world, one senses, for it to rush into reality, colours and touch and taste.

Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.

You can understand a lot about yourself by working out which fairytale you use to present your world to yourself in.

I don't see much point in doing things for a pure joke. Every now and then you need a joke, but not so much as the people who spend all their lives constructing joke palaces think you do.