To own a certain book - and to choose it without help - is to define yourself.

The companionship of dead writers is a wonderful form of live friendship.

Start with the notion that yours is the sole responsibility unless there's powerful evidence to the contrary

The next day, when I was sober, I thought again about the three of us, and about time's many paradoxes. For instance: that when we are young and sensitive, we are also at our most hurtful; whereas when the blood begins to slow, when we feel less sharply, when we are more armoured and have learnt how to bear hurt, we tread more carefully.

In 1980, I published my first novel, in the usual swirl of unjustified hope and justified anxiety.

That's one of the central problems of history, isn't it, sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us.

In Britain I'm sometimes regarded as a suspiciously Europeanized writer, who has this rather dubious French influence.