In order to successfully impersonate men, the woman [Margaret Thatcher] launched a war.

The word 'however' is like an imp coiled beneath your chair. It induces ink to form words you have not yet seen, and lines to march across the page and overshoot the margin. There are no endings. If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. Here is one.

I was the subject of an experiment in love. I lived my life under her gaze, undergoing certain trials for her so that she would not have to undergo them for herself. But, how are our certainties forged, except by the sweat and tears of other people? If your parents don't teach you how to live; you learn it from books; and clever people watch you learn from your mistakes.

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

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

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

He thinks, I remembered you, Thomas More, but you didn't remember me. You never even saw me coming.