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

Once you're labeled as mentally ill, and that's in your medical notes, then anything you say can be discounted as an artefact of your mental illness.

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.

I'm a very organised and rational and linear thinker and you have to stop all that to write a novel.

The worship of Thomas More goes beyond Catholics.

A novel should be a book of questions, not a book of answers.

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