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.

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

What [Margaret Thatcher] made a play for was the acquisitive: our greedy nature. She set aside other things like an identification with community, altruism. The only collective that she understood was: Rally around and slay the enemy.

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

By the tits of Holy Agnes

I only became a novelist because I thought I had missed my chance to become a historian.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.