Envy has always hidden behind moral indignation.

Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.

Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: "You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do."

I wanted to write about my mother as she should have been if she had not been messed up by World War I.

There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.

We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed.

All politicians are not the same. I've never felt that way. What is the same is that voters get very excited about new faces, like Clinton and Blair - and they have unrealistic expectations that the world will change overnight. A cynical old hand like myself knows that it won't.