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

Love means having something to betray.

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

Cheats, liars and criminals may resist every blandishment while respectable gentlemen have been moved to appalling treasons by watery cabbage in a departmental canteen.

There are moments which are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur.

Ideologies have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.

I don't think that there are very many good writers who don't live without a sense of tension. If they haven't got one immediately available to them, then they usually manage to manufacture it in their private lives.