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

Busyness, I feel increasingly, is the writer's curse and downfall. You read too much and write too readily, you become cut off from your inner life, from the flow of your own thoughts, and turned far too much towards the outside world.

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] assumed somehow that this would get the woman voter and all those juvenile male voters who wanted a well-regulated household with a woman who knew what she should be doing.

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

The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.

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