My literary career was a fluke. Utterly unexpected.

I think it's very, very hard not to go slightly crazy if you're in the top in politics, especially if you're there for a long time.

You can always spot a fool, for he is a man who will tell you he knows who is going to win an election.

History is what we bring to it, not just the events themselves, but how we interpret those events.

It's when you've stopped writing and are doing other things, especially when you're asleep, that the real work is done.

Working 14 hours a day until you're 55 and missing your kids growing up is not what I would consider a recipe for happiness.

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.