[Margaret Thatcher] aroused such strong loathing in so many people. That's the fact that interests me.

So many years of preparation, for what was called adult life: was it for this?

No ruler in the history of the world has ever been able to afford a war. They're not affordable things. No prince ever says, 'This is my budget, so this is the kind of war I can have.

The word 'however' is like an imp coiled beneath your chair. It induces ink to form words you have not yet seen, and lines to march across the page and overshoot the margin. There are no endings. If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. Here is one.

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

I spend a lot of my time talking to the dead, but since I get paid for it, no one thinks I'm mad.

In terms of essays, I would say Oliver Sacks. His breadth of hard knowledge and imagination and empathy seems to constitute the perfect mind to me.