I was 10 when I realised I couldn't stand football. I'd tried, obviously, before this - no one wants to give in to social pariah-hood without a fight. I had stood frozen on pitches, done some running about and shouted a lot, as though I cared.

I think I am becoming obsessive-compulsive. David Beckham apparently turns all the Diet Coke cans in his fridge to face the same way every morning, and I nerdily sharpen all the pencils in my pot before sitting down to work.

We do not read to pass the time, but to inhabit time.

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.

It's not a crime not to know yourself. It's not a crime to send life away. It's just a shame.

The idea that people in novels should be more sympathetic than people in life simply baffles me.

I grew up in a working-class community. I come from a big family. I knew Donald Trump would win because I knew he is what poor Americans think a rich person looks like. And I knew that Hillary Clinton would annoy voters in their tens of millions, because she basically sucked at communicating with poor people and seemed like a person who'd been powerful and rich for decades. She was a disastrous candidate. I mean, she was up against a psychopath and she still lost. The country's thinking was beyond her, literally.