Writing a novel is an act of self-annihilation as much as self-discovery. You can kill whole appetites and flood whole depths while plumbing them, but if you are serious about it you also get to put something into the world that wasn't quite there before.

Like children all over the world, by the age of 10 I'd come to believe that most of the really humane creatures were not really human at all.

As an old creative industry full of cruelty and moral sense, British journalism once flourished on the imperative that people required the truth in order to survive. But people don't require that now. They want sensation and they want it for nothing.

Interviewing is not a democratic art.

Once upon a time, I thought that politics was the name we gave to our higher instincts. That was before Margaret Thatcher, who came to power when I was 11 years old.

The first rule of travel is that you should always go with someone you love, which is why I travel alone.

Always trust strangers, it's the people you know that let you down.