As a writer, you owe it to yourself not to get stuck in a rut of looking at the world in a certain way.

I loved Gore Vidal's Burr. That book gave me courage.

I will get into trouble, I am sure, because since my Kate Middleton speech and before, certain papers were after me. I am not saying, however, that it would have been moral or right to assassinate Mrs. [Margaret] Thatcher, but I know it will be read that way. I know it will cause a problem.

It is almost a joke, but a joke that nobody tells.

[Margaret Thatcher] is a woman who, when she wrote her entry for "Who's Who," didn't include her mother. Now whether that was corrected in subsequent editions, I do not know.

I would have been a disaster as a career politician. I would never have toed a party line.

Beneath every history, another history.