I loved Gore Vidal's Burr. That book gave me courage.

Like a historian, I interpret, select, discard, shape, simplify. Unlike a historian, I make up people's thoughts.

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

Watching live actors onstage, in something that changes night by night, real people picking up cues from each other, it concentrates you on the process rather than the result.

Insight cannot be taken back. You cannot return to the moment you were in before.

It is all very well planning what you will do in six months, what you will do in a year, but it’s no good at all if you don’t have a plan for tomorrow.

When I began to read as an adult, my first big enthusiasm was Evelyn Waugh. I read almost exclusively novelists of a generation back. I did the Russians, then I started getting more up to date.