If every inhabitant of a liberal democracy believes in liberal democracy, then it doesn't matter what creed or colour they are.

When you’ve lost all your play, guess what love becomes. Work. Work that gets harder every hour.

I hire tea by the tea bag.

I think novelists are in the education business, really, but they're not teaching you times tables, they are teaching you responsiveness and morality and to make nuanced judgments. And really to just make the planet look a bit richer when you go out into the street.

No-one is going to sit down and read Bleak House to the family any more, but they can all huddle up happily in front of Charles Bronson.

My belief is that everything that's written about you is actually secondary showbiz nonsense, and you shouldn't take any notice of it.

You see tragedy requires persons of heroic stature. It works on the principle of people being more than humansuper-humanand also being only too human. But there just aren't many great figures around now, so the tragic mechanisms can't work.