I didn't cry much after I was 35, but staggered stony-faced into middle age, a handkerchief still in my bag just in case.

Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.

[Margaret Thatcher] was always talking about what the prudent housewife should do and what the prudent housewife knew.

[Margaret Thatcher] was pretending that running a country was like running a household, which she knew wasn't true.

The more facts I can have, the better. I can operate very nicely between them, but I am not very good at making things up. I am not sure how ethical it is.

When you have committed enough words to paper, you feel you have a spine stiff enough to stand up in the wind. But when you stop writing, you find that's all you are - a spine, a row of rattling vertebrae, dried out like an old quill pen.

I only became a novelist because I thought I had missed my chance to become a historian.