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

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

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

Like a historian, I interpret, select, discard, shape, simplify. Unlike a historian, I make up people's thoughts.

It is better not to try people, not to force them to desperation. Make them prosper; out of superfluidity, they will be generous. Full bellies breed gentle manners. The pinch of famine makes monsters.

So many years of preparation, for what was called adult life: was it for this?

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.