My literary career was a fluke. Utterly unexpected.

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

If you spend too long trying to avoid death, you will be dead in at least one way.

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

To be brave, by definition, one has first to be afraid.

But only a fool sails into combat with nature

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.