When I am fishing, I think quite a lot about the fish, but I also think about the book I'm writing.

I've always found women more loyal, more disciplined, less neurotic, more hardworking. I just think they're perfect colleagues. Whereas, God knows, I've dealt with plenty of neurotic men.

It's miraculous how much easier the computer has made my sort of work.

A Tory government with a decent mandate seems the only hope of tackling the fiscal catastrophe responsibly.

Lots of us when we're children believe 'oh well, if the world knew us as we really are, they'd know what wonderful, clever, brilliant, charming people we really are.'

I would have been a disastrous soldier.

As George Orwell wisely observed a generation later, the only way swiftly to end a war is to lose it.