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.

She is very plain. What does Henry see in her?'" "He thinks she's stupid. He finds it restful.

[H]ope takes you by the throat like a stranger, it makes your heart leap.

[Margaret Thatcher] aroused such strong loathing in so many people. That's the fact that interests me.

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

When I was thin, I had no notion of what being fat is like. When I worked in a department store, I had sold clothes to women of most sizes, so I should have known; but perhaps you have to experience the state from the inside, to understand what fat is like.

I think I would have been a reasonably good lawyer. I have a faculty for making sense of mountains of information.