For what's the point of breeding children, if each generation does not improve on what went before.

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

I spend a lot of my time talking to the dead, but since I get paid for it, no one thinks I'm mad.

I will get into trouble, I am sure, because since my Kate Middleton speech and before, certain papers were after me. I am not saying, however, that it would have been moral or right to assassinate Mrs. [Margaret] Thatcher, but I know it will be read that way. I know it will cause a problem.

If you are without impulses, you are, to a degree, without joy..." 469

It was a very funny conference. I knew [Christopher Hitchens] before that. He had always been a good angel to me. He once stole a phrase from me that came out of his mouth on television. I saw his eyes move sideways. I thought, It's alright, you can have it! The conference was light on women. Salman Rushdie showed up, they were doing their own thing. I didn't feel neglected!

I'm a very organised and rational and linear thinker and you have to stop all that to write a novel.