Chicago is seen as everything that Trump detests, which I think kind of reflects really well on the city I think, because it's a mark of what a classy, cool, sort of place it is. You can't tame everyone in America, as much as these people would like to, into some kind of small-town, Southern community.

His eyes are wild, psychotic slits that bat-dance in your soul looking for good things to crush or bad elements to identify with.

In America I think we need to move towards a social democracy, European-style basically, and I think that in Britain we do as well.

That's all very well as an abstract moral principle, Avril, a coffee-table theoretical construct, but there's no denying the sheer gratuitous pleasure to be derived from seeing members of the ruling class in pain and torment.

There is a kind of mysticism to writing.

When two people were in love you had to leave them to it. Especially when you weren't in love and wished that you were. That could embarrass. That could hurt.

I was in Athens for a football match when 9/11 went down, and it was quite spectacular - we went into this bar and tried to find out what happened, and the bartender said "it's only the American and the Arabs. They're not big football nations." So the feeling was, what's it got to do with us? Why are football games being cancelled in Europe? The intelligentsia in the West feel like they have to figure out the significance of it all, whereas people have other pressing concerns, related to basic needs.