I think that in the future, as more and more money and wealth goes to the 1 per cent, it's going to polarize into the people who are for and anti-freedom. It's not that they'll have a left and a right wing thing, it's going to be a freedom and anti-freedom polarization, I think.

There is a kind of mysticism to writing.

I think, ironically, the media's been good for America, but Trump's been good for the media. He's revitalized The New York Times and CNN - it's never had so much integrity and so much power ever, and that's because being attacked by constant authoritarians and fascists with an agenda has actually got them to sharpen up and to get back to base principles about what the media should actually be. It's also that the circulation boost has removed this horrible, incipient commercial pressure that compromises media.

You've got the whole stuff with transgender toilets and stuff like that - that's no way for a government to behave. We're supposed to be against ISIS, so why are we trying to slowly introduce a country-club version of Sharia law in America, you know? It doesn't make any real sense at all. I think there's going to be a lot of energy, there is already a lot of reaction against that - people are prepared to really stand up and be counted for democracy, and in the process to find out what is and what isn't.

You write people as human beings first and then the gender specific stuff second.

When you look at the whole explosion of the Internet, the decline of print journalism, there are all of these plus-or-minus ramifications, and you have to work it out. The great thing about books is that you have a tactile thing that's there. You can download this or download that, but how long do you want to be staring at a screen for the rest of your life? You've got to have some kind of proper interface for people that's not about the screen.

It's only now that I realize that behaviour always has a context and precedents, it's what you do rather than what you are, although we often never recognise that context or understand what these precedents are.