People will identify with a persecuted minority without asking themselves what they are identifying with.

This was an idea peculiar to Camille, Maximilien thought, that the worse things get, the better they get. No one else seems to think this way.

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

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

Like every writer, I'm drawn by unlikely juxtapositions, precisely-dated and once-only collisions between people from different worlds.

I am sure that all politicians seek the home connection with the voter. But [Margaret Thatcher] carried it to extremes.

I am very happy in second-hand bookshops; would a gardener not be happy in a garden?