Originality is dangerous. It challenges, questions, overturns assumptions, unsettles moral codes.

If I were dead, then nobody in England would have to fuss about the cost of my security and whether or not I merited such special treatment for so long.

I think the book is less emotional than the film. With the film, the emotions are much more raw and in front. In the book, they are kind of ironized and seen through comedy.

We crave permission openly to become our secret selves.

Cruelty is not a literary value.

Travel was pointless. It removed you from the place in which you had a meaning, and to which you gave meaning in return by dedicating your life to it, and it spirited you away into fairylands where you were, and looked, frankly absurd.

The world is full of things that upset people. But most of us deal with it and move on and don't try and burn the planet down.