Busyness, I feel increasingly, is the writer's curse and downfall. You read too much and write too readily, you become cut off from your inner life, from the flow of your own thoughts, and turned far too much towards the outside world.

I believe this was [Margaret Thatcher] estimate of the voter: "These people are so stupid that they will vote for me because they think I know how to run the household."

I think it took me half a page of 'Wolf Hall' to think: 'This is the novel I should have been writing all along.'

I am sure that all politicians seek the home connection with the voter. But [Margaret Thatcher] carried it to extremes.

Every leader operates under the threat of assassination.

He is careful to deny responsibility for September, but he does not, you notice, condemn the killings. He also refrains from killing words, sparing Roland and Buzot, as if they were beneath his notice. August 10 was illegal, he says; so too was the taking of the Bastille. What account can we take of that, in revolution? It is the nature of revolutions to break laws. We are not justices of the peace; we are legislators to a new world.

Imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you.