The minute you become a leader of a country, you go into a very small club. You join that sort of pantheon of other world leaders.

It's really a lovely feeling to write knowing that failure is taken off the table because if it's bad you just never show it to anyone.

To what degree are historians chroniclers of the truth and to what degree are they just novelists, frankly?

There are so many other people involved in the making of a play or a television series or whatever... even if you're a novelist there's so much in just the marketing of a book, or even the time... the zeitgeist, the moment at which it comes out. There's a lot you can't control.

I am not a politics wonk. I like the idea of my writing reflecting more about who I am or other people.

It might be more difficult because you haven't got a book or a prop, but for the most part I like to write unpaid... initially and my own stories.

I give everything my best shot and sometimes it doesn't work out and other times it works out much better than you thought.