There's a feeling of power in reserve, a power that drives right through the bone, like the shiver you sense in the shaft of an axe when you take it into your hand. You can strike, or you can not strike, and if you choose to hold back the blow, you can still feel inside you the resonance of the omitted thing.

I am usually protective of my work, not showing it to anyone until it has been redrafted and polished.

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

Florence and Milan had given him ideas more flexible than those of people who'd stayed at home.

What is it we are hating? It goes beyond politics. I suppose that my fascination with [Margaret Thatcher] is not just with her political record but with her as a phenomenon.

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

When you become published and become a reviewer, piles of books come along and you are pushed by fashion and what you are commissioned to do.