Over the city lies the sweet, rotting odor of yesterday's unrecollected sins.

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

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

But an experienced reader is also a self-aware and critical reader. I can't remember ever reading a story without judging it.

People will identify with a persecuted minority without asking themselves what they are identifying with.

In my 20s I was in constant pain from undiagnosed endometriosis. With no prospect of a cure, I decided I needed a career - writing - that could accommodate being ill.

And if a diversion is needed, why not arrest a general? Arthur Dillon is a friend of eminent deputies, a contender for the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Front; he has proved himself at Valmy and in a halfdozen actions since. In the National Assembly he was a liberal; now he is a republican. Isn't it then logical that he should be thrown into gaol, July 1, on suspicion of passing military secrets to the enemy?