Insights don't usually arrive at my desk, but go into notebooks when I'm on the move. Or half-asleep.

Fiction leaves us so much work to do, allows the individual so much input; you have to see, you have to hear, you have to taste the madeleine, and while you are seemingly passive in your chair, you have to travel.

[Margaret Thatcher] admitted to being the daughter of her father but not the daughter of her mother!

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

I was the subject of an experiment in love. I lived my life under her gaze, undergoing certain trials for her so that she would not have to undergo them for herself. But, how are our certainties forged, except by the sweat and tears of other people? If your parents don't teach you how to live; you learn it from books; and clever people watch you learn from your mistakes.

I'm a very organised and rational and linear thinker and you have to stop all that to write a novel.

[Margaret] Thatcher could fake her class background, but she couldn't fake the quality of her mind.