Quiet people, people who arent given to emotional outbursts, people who are economic with words - theyre also fun to play, but you find yourself needing a laser precision in those roles. Otherwise you just sort of stand around, looking slightly brain-dead. You worry about being uninteresting.

I've had loss in my life, and I like to think my mother's energy lives on in some faintly Buddhist way. I do find some comfort there.

I have a three-year-old and a four-year-old at home, and my mornings are about just dealing with the fact of that. I oddly enjoy it.

You have to go where the good writing is.

No Western government has ever played the long-term in terms of foreign policy.

I was, if you like, a successful schoolboy in that I had a degree of talent in all the required things that make you a success at school.

You just have to take control of your own performance.