It really matters to writers to find and treasure readers, all the more when they're on the other side of the world.

“One Minus One’”and “Barcelona, 1975” are more or less autobiographical.

I live in words. I like looking at things, but I don't have a strong visual imagination.

Some of our loves and attachments are elemental and beyond our choosing, and for that very reason they come spiced with pain and regret and need and hollowness and a feeling as close to anger as I will ever be able to manage.

While historians may go on attempting grand, sweeping and defining narratives, they work in a time when readers know that another narrative always lies in wait, and that the more intelligent an historian is, the more tentative and self-scrutinizing the tone.

John McGovern taught me that it's OK to write repeatedly about the same things.

Between the ages of 8 and 12 it was difficult to know what my father was saying, and he moved very slowly, and then he died.