Thatcherism has become bigger than she ever was.

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

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.

Writers never feel comfortable having labels attached to them, however accurate they are.

I like the rain before it falls. of course there is no such thing, she said. That's why it's my favorite. Something can still make you happy, can't it, even if it isn't real.

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

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.