I'm one of these children who grew up at the knee of my grandmother and her elder sister, listening to very old people talk about their memories.

[Margaret Thatcher] was pretending that running a country was like running a household, which she knew wasn't true.

For historians, creative writers provide a kind of pornography.

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

When narratives fracture, when words fail, I take consolation from the part of my life that always works: the stationery order. The mail-order stationery people supply every need from royal blue Quink to a dazzling variety of portable hard drives.

For what's the point of breeding children, if each generation does not improve on what went before.

I only became a novelist because I thought I had missed my chance to become a historian.