If you go back, 'The Great Gatsby' would be a portrait of the rich and fortune made by business.

In a way I'm almost more rueful about the notion of having a non-ideological Labour party than I am about the personality of Tony Blair.

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

Another of Cicero's maxims was that if you must do something unpopular, you might as well do it wholeheartedly, for in politics there is no credit to be won by timidity.

In a generation or two, or maybe sooner, young golfers of true sporting instinct will wonder why all this handling of the ball is necessary. It will seem to them that the game is not as good as it might be.

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.

History is too important to be left to the historians.