All writing is a form of manipulation, of course, but you realize that a plain sentence can actually do so much.

I think fiction lends itself to messiness rather than the ideal, and plays well with the ironies surrounding what happens versus what should happen.

As I settled down to sleep in that new bed in the dark city, I saw that it was too late now, too late for everything. I would not be given a second chance. In the hours when I woke, I have to tell you that this struck me almost with relief.

All writing is a form of manipulation, of course, but you realize that a plain sentence can actually do so much.

Writer's block! It doesn't exist. You just long for ideas to go away so you have an idea of peace.

I have to write a first draft with a fountain pen before I type it up as a second.

It may be enough to study history in all its nuance and ambiguity for its own sake. But there is no country free of the need to find new ways of reading the past as an inspiring way of thinking about everything else, including the present.