Reading is a majority skill but a minority art.

It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.

There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond this there is great unrest.

When you are writing fiction your task is to reflect the fullest complications of the world

Pride makes us long for a solution to things – a solution, a purpose, a final cause; but the better telescopes become, the more stars appear.

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.

Well, to be honest I think I tell less truth when I write journalism than when I write fiction.