Florence and Milan had given him ideas more flexible than those of people who'd stayed at home.

[Margaret Thatcher] assumed somehow that this would get the woman voter and all those juvenile male voters who wanted a well-regulated household with a woman who knew what she should be doing.

In terms of essays, I would say Oliver Sacks. His breadth of hard knowledge and imagination and empathy seems to constitute the perfect mind to me.

[Margaret Thatcher] was always talking about what the prudent housewife should do and what the prudent housewife knew.

For historians, creative writers provide a kind of pornography.

You don't get on by being original. You don't get on by being bright. You don't get on by being strong. You get on by being a subtle crook.

The writer I adore is Ivy Compton-Burnett.I couldn't get more than a few pages in when I first read her. In many ways, she is very clumsy and her plots are rubbish. But we don't read her for that. There are pages and pages of dialogue. What it requires is real effort and attention.