It's part of a writer's profession, as it's part of a spy's profession, to prey on the community to which he's attached, to take away information - often in secret - and to translate that into intelligence for his masters, whether it's his readership or his spy masters. And I think that both professions are perhaps rather lonely.

I grew up in a completely bookless household. It was my father's boast that he had never read a book from end to end.

God is in his Heaven and the first night was a wow.

Luck's just another word for destiny... either you make your own or you're screwed.

Sometimes we have to do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers.

Our power knows no limits, yet we cannot find food for a starving child, or a home for a refugee. Our knowledge is without measure and we build the weapons that will destroy us. We live on the edge of ourselves, terrified of the darkness within. We have harmed, corrupted and ruined, we have made mistakes and deceived.

In the hands of politicians grand designs achieve nothing but new forms of the old misery.