I just wanted to be an ordinary, middle-class person. When I was at Cambridge I made great efforts to lose the last remnants of my cockney accent.

In London, I've always lived within 10 miles of where I was born. You see, there is something called a spirit of place, and my place happens to be London, at least once a fortnight.

People are much more interesting than people realise.

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

Every book for me is a chapter in the long book which will finally be closed on the day of my death.

Familial love can find an echo in our own hearts just as it did in that of Charles Dickens.

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