Sometimes an actor performs a character, but sometimes an actor just performs. With writing, I don't think it's performing a character, really, if the character you're performing is yourself. I don't see that as playing a role. It's just appearing in public.

We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.

If you are doing a piece about somebody, even if you admire them tremendously and express that in the piece, express that admiration, if they're not used to being written about, if they're civilians, [...] they're not used to seeing themselves through other people's eyes. So you will always see them from a slightly different angle than they see themselves, and they feel a little betrayed by that.

Americans are uneasy with their possessions, guilty about power, all of which is difficult for Europeans to perceive because they are themselves so truly materialistic, so versed in the uses of power.

There was a level on which I believed that what had happened remained reversible

I never had much interest in being a child. As a way of being it seemed flat, failed to engage.

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it