There's one thing worse than change and that's the status quo.

Yet it's not for want of future that I'm here, he thought. It's for want of a present.

People who've had very unhappy childhoods are pretty good at inventing themselves. If nobody invents you for yourself, nothing is left but to invent yourself for others.

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.

Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.

I had two experiences of criminality: one was my conman father, the other was teaching at Eton

It's easy to forget what intelligence consists of: luck and speculation. Here and there a windfall, here and there a scoop.