O the shame of it, the humiliating shame of being condescended to by dolts

One of the extraordinary things about human events is that the unthinkable becomes thinkable.

One of the problems with defending free speech is you often have to defend people that you find to be outrageous and unpleasant and disgusting.

British society has never been cleansed of the filth of imperialism.

With death comes honesty.

I think the business of writing a great deal of it is the business of paying attention to your characters, to the world they live in, to the story you have to tell, but just a kind of deep attention and out of that if you pay attention properly the story will tell you what it needs.

Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence.