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

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.

Insights don't usually arrive at my desk, but go into notebooks when I'm on the move. Or half-asleep.

Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.

When people begin to talk about "our island story" my hackles rise. It is deluded and conservative.

[Margaret Thatcher] said there was no thing such as society. This is what I find so interesting psychologically. Where did she come from? She had no mother. Her father came from a very identifiable background: religious, highly conformist.

When you have committed enough words to paper, you feel you have a spine stiff enough to stand up in the wind. But when you stop writing, you find that's all you are - a spine, a row of rattling vertebrae, dried out like an old quill pen.