None of us really either know the circumstances of our death or are likely to exert as much control over it as we would like to, but we can certainly have a little more say in it if we are terminally ill than we have at the moment. That's the element of dignity, but sure, life is very hard to organise even when you are fit and healthy.

By concentrating on what is good in people, by appealing to their idealism and their sense of justice, and by asking them to put their faith in the future, socialists put themselves at a severe disadvantage.

When he thought of her, it rather amazed him, that he had let that girl with her violin go. Now, of course, he saw that her self-effacing proposal was quite irrelevant. All she had needed was the certainty of his love, and his reassurance that there was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them. Love and patience- if only he had had them both at once- would surely have seen them both through.

He saw that no one owned anything really. It's all rented, or borrowed. Our possessions will outlast us, we'll desert them in the end.

I think the Americans are dying to leave Iraq. I was against the war but longed for the fall of Saddam; the decision to go to war clearly was taken long before the matter reached the U.N., given its inevitability. I kept my fingers crossed for the emergence of democracy in Iraq even if that would mean victory for a man whose politics I have little sympathy with.

In that shrinking moment he discovered that he had never hated anyone until now. It was a feeling as pure as love, but dispassionate and icily rational.

Novels without female characters were a lifeless desert.