My first career ambitions involved turning into a boy; I intended to be either a railway guard or a knight errant.

In terms of essays, I would say Oliver Sacks. His breadth of hard knowledge and imagination and empathy seems to constitute the perfect mind to me.

Back in my 20s, when I wrote 'A Place of Greater Safety,' the French Revolution novel, I thought, 'I'll always have to write historical novels because I can't do plots.'' But in the six years of writing that novel, I actually learned to write, to invent things.

Like a historian, I interpret, select, discard, shape, simplify. Unlike a historian, I make up people's thoughts.

People will identify with a persecuted minority without asking themselves what they are identifying with.

To me, Hillary [Clinton] looks alright. She looks like the kind of woman I admire. She doesn't seem to have distorted her essential nature.

'Show up at the desk' is one of the first rules of writing, but for 'Wolf Hall' I was about 30 years late.