Politics is never a victory, it's just the remorseless grinding forward of events.

By dawn he had surrendered, gratefully, to the old inertia, the product of always seeing both sides of every question.

Of all human activities, writing is the one for which it is easiest to find excuses not to begin – the desk’s too big, the desk’s too small, there’s too much noise, there’s too much quiet, it’s too hot, too cold, too early, too late. I had learned over the years to ignore them all, and simply to start.

Their souls were contagious. ... Bloodsuckers, spiders and vampires: that was what Lenin called them.

It is perfectly legitimate to write novels which are essentially prose poems, but in the end, I think, a novel is like a car, and if you buy a car and grow flowers in it, you're forgetting that the car is designed to take you somewhere else.

It implies a slight failure as a writer that you are reduced to being a ghostwriter for the money.

I've always just wanted to earn my living by writing. The best thing is to go into my study in the morning and stay there and put words together.