To say she was my girlfriend was absurd: no one the wrong side of thirty has a girlfriend… I suppose I ought to have realize it’s ominous that forty thousand years of human language had failed to produce a word for our relationship.

I write as well as I can. I'm a journalist at heart, so it's the story that matters.

But clever people all make one mistake. They all think everyone else is stupid. And everyone isn't stupid. They just take a bit more time, that's all.

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

Cicero most reminds me of Harold Wilson. Both men knew how to keep the show on the road.

Don't try to write too much in a single session. One thousand words a day is quite enough. Stop after about four or five hours.

What a heap of ash most political careers amount to, when one really stops to consider them!