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

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

When people begin to talk about "our island story" my hackles rise. It is deluded and conservative.

My first career ambitions involved turning into a boy; I intended to be either a railway guard or a knight errant.

Over the city lies the sweet, rotting odor of yesterday's unrecollected sins.

There's a feeling of power in reserve, a power that drives right through the bone, like the shiver you sense in the shaft of an axe when you take it into your hand. You can strike, or you can not strike, and if you choose to hold back the blow, you can still feel inside you the resonance of the omitted thing.

[T]he heart is like any other organ, you can weigh it on a scale.