Everyone who is not happy must be shot.

You have no idea how humiliating it was, as a boy, to suddenly have all your clothes, your toys, snatched by the bailiff. I mean we were a middle-class family, it's not as if it was happening up and down the street. It made me ashamed, I felt dirty.

There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction.

How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre.

A good writer can watch a cat pad across the street and know what it is to be pounced upon by a Bengal tiger.

A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.

Smiley was soaked to the skin and God as a punishment had removed all taxis from the face of London.