Margaret Thatcher has shown that there is power and dignity to be won by defying the status quo and the majority rather than by adapting to them. If the British left, which she froze into immobility like Medusa, could bring itself to learn from this, then we might not have to look upon her like again.

And the pleasures and rewards of the intellect are inseparable from angst, uncertainty, conflict and even despair.

For most of my life I let women do the driving and was happy to let them.

Totalitarian is a cliché, dictatorship is based on clichéd thinking, on very tried and tested uniform stuff. They don't mind that they're boring, they don't mind that they're obvious, their point is made.

Trust is not the same as faith. A friend is someone you trust. Putting faith in anyone is a mistake.

I've had some dark nights of the soul, of course, but giving in to depression would be a sellout, a defeat.

In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.