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

People who wrote literary novels about the past probably didn't want them pegged as historical fiction. Certainly that was true in England.

Memory isn't a theme; it's part of the human condition.

When I was thin, I had no notion of what being fat is like. When I worked in a department store, I had sold clothes to women of most sizes, so I should have known; but perhaps you have to experience the state from the inside, to understand what fat is like.

Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.

History is a set of skills rather than a narrative.

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.