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.

I think that whenever a nation feels itself to be at is zenith, it starts to feel a creeping sense of anxiety.

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.

The natural impulse of men is to follow and whoever has the strongest sense of purpose will always dominate.

People perish. Books are immortal.

If long hitting is the thing that causes the spectators to whistle through their teeth in wonderment, why not play tournaments up and down an expansive stadium?

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