It is strange, is it not, how a person can adore one's soul so much that they adore one's body also?

What captivity has been to the Jews, exile has been to the Irish. For us, the romance of our native land begins only after we have left home; it is really only with other people that we become Irishmen.

When I was a child I wanted to be Pope. My greatest disappointment is missing out on that. I also wanted to be a tap dancer but I never fulfilled that ambition either.

I strike up conversations all the time and it is very interesting, finding out about things I know nothing about.

I don't in any sense think of myself as a celebrity, which of course I'm not.

London has always provided the landscape for my imagination. It becomes a character - a living being - within each of my books.

It may seem unfashionable to say so, but historians should seize the imagination as well as the intellect. History is, in a sense, a story, a narrative of adventure and of vision, of character and of incident. It is also a portrait of the great general drama of the human spirit.