But at the same time, I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories because they turn into novels.

Objectivity is just male subjectivity.

Contemporary Britain seems an endlessly fascinating place to me - but if I knew a little bit more about other places, and other times, maybe it wouldn't.

Ah, well, I have no talent for nonfiction, that's my problem.

But I have always - ever since The Accidental Woman - written novels about individuals attempting to make choices in the context of situations over which they have no control.

I have two ideas for novels at the moment, neither of them all that conventional, but I'm not ready to choose between them yet, let alone settle down to the process of writing.

Thatcherism has become bigger than she ever was.