The cynics are correct the sense of freewill is only that feeling which we have when we take the necessitated option that most appeals to us.

As a bookish adolescent, I sopped up texts as if I were blotting paper and they were fluid.

I'm English enough to feel something of a gut-reaction to modernism, to continental philosophising and anything that smacks of a refusal to pay attention to the forensics: the empirical facts on the ground.

The life of the professional writer - like that of any freelance, whether she be a plumber or a podiatrist - is predicated on willpower. Without it there simply wouldn't be any remuneration, period.

There's a flip side to having prominent public intellectuals, which is that they start meddling in politics and often with quite disastrous results.

Some people have human muses - mine is a city. I feel a startling ambivalence towards London, but for better or worse my work has come utterly to depend upon it.

I think it's a misreading of Dostoevsky to think of him as a programmatic theist. He's actually much closer to someone like William James. He's actually a pragmatist.