People endure what they endure and they deal with it. It may corrupt them. It may lead them into all sorts of compensatory excesses.

The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they've been in.

Politics is still crucially important. Our choices are vital, and we've got to make them and not just say, 'Oh they're all the same.' They are all the same in certain ways, alas - a political animal is such an animal.

I believe everybody is responsible for what they do themselves.

The knowledge that we have about what it is to be human that we have as a child is something we necessarily must lose.

I have been aware, from the age of 6, that I had talent.

The strangest thing that human speech and human writing can do is create a metaphor. That is an amazing leap, is it not?