I will get into trouble, I am sure, because since my Kate Middleton speech and before, certain papers were after me. I am not saying, however, that it would have been moral or right to assassinate Mrs. [Margaret] Thatcher, but I know it will be read that way. I know it will cause a problem.

You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws.

Those who are made can be unmade.

[Margaret Thatcher] was pretending that running a country was like running a household, which she knew wasn't true.

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.

Some readers read a book as if it were an instruction manual, expecting to understand everything first time, but of course when you write, you put into every sentence an overflow of meaning, and you create in every sentence as many resonances and double meanings and ambiguities as you can possibly pack in there, so that people can read it again and get something new each time.

[H]ope takes you by the throat like a stranger, it makes your heart leap.