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

I was going to say 'my friend Stuart', but I suppose he's not a friend any more. I seem to have lost a number of friends in the last few years. I don't mean that I've fallen out with them, in any dramatic way. We've just decided not to stay in touch. And that's what it's been: a decision, a conscious decision, because it's not difficult to stay in touch with people nowadays, there are so many different ways of doing it. But as you get older, I think that some friendships start to feel increasingly redundant. You just find yourself asking, "What's the point?" And then you stop.

The biggest markets for my books outside the UK are France and Italy, and those are the two countries where I also have the closest personal relationships with my translators - I don't know whether that's a coincidence, or if there's something to be learned from it.

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

I'm one of those unlucky people who had a happy childhood.

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

Thatcherism has become bigger than she ever was.