I used to think that when I set out that doing the research was enough! But then the gaps would emerge that could only be filled by the imagination. And imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you.

But an experienced reader is also a self-aware and critical reader. I can't remember ever reading a story without judging it.

Imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you.

Wolf Hall attempts to duplicate not the historian's chronology but the way memory works: in leaps, loops, flashes.

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

[Margaret Thatcher] was always talking about what the prudent housewife should do and what the prudent housewife knew.

I think it is going to take another fifty years for the report to be in. If I were to give a preliminary report, I would say that [Margaret Thatcher] wrecked this country.