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

Well, I like the rain before it falls.

I like the idea of a big caesura between the narratives, a space which readers can fill in with their own speculative history.

I had no sense of any reputation that What a Carve Up! might acquire - at the time I didnt even have a publisher, so my main worry was whether it was even going to see the light of day or not.

The plain fact is that she never really liked me, and never wanted me. I had been a mistake; and that, to some extent, is what I remain in my own eyes, to this day. The knowledge never goes, can never be undone. You just have to find a way to live with it.

I live a perfectly happy and comfortable life in Blair's Britain, but I can't work up much affection for the culture we've created for ourselves: it's too cynical, too knowing, too ironic, too empty of real value and meaning.

But you can try to read books at the wrong time or for the wrong reasons.