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" History is what we bring to it, not just the events themselves, but how we interpret those events. "

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" I see myself as the literary equivalent of a skilled lathe-operator, or a basket-weaver; a potter, maybe: I make mildly diverting objects that people want to buy. "

" First comes an idea. Then, characters begin to evolve out of the landscape of that idea. And then, finally, characters dominate: plot is simply a function of what these people might do or be. Everything has to flow from their personalities; otherwise it will not be emotionally engaging, or plausible. "

" You find out what you think by talking to yourself. "

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

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

" Writers and journalists tend to be simplistic about politics when, like all other areas of life, it's more complicated. "

" Working 14 hours a day until you're 55 and missing your kids growing up is not what I would consider a recipe for happiness. "

" Humans have changed little over time. We think we've invented the modern world but they were making better speeches 2,000 years ago and grappling with issues of empire and terrorism. "

" You can't ever win the war on crime, or the war on terror. You can't repeal human nature. "

" I am sure future historians will say the biggest and most astonishing change in politics has been the embracing of all the tenets of Thatcherism by the party of Keir Hardie: trade union legislation, Europe, the replacement of Trident, 10 per cent tax for people who have made millions from their companies. "

" My father left school at 14, my mother at 13. My father was clever and well-read. He took a newspaper, always watched the news, discussed it all the time. "

" There's nothing more interesting than the details of someone's life. "

" Everyone thinks politics will just go on the way it is. I don't agree. "

" Social mores change all the time. In the mid-1970s, it would've been astonishing, say, to see two men holding hands in the streets. And the attitude to having a fling with a girl, or whatever, was quite different then. "

" For me, as I suspect for most people, there comes a point where you have enough. If you've got £20 million, why keep going until you've got £100 million or £1,000 million? Does anyone need another vast yacht or private jet or a house full of gold? "

" It implies a slight failure as a writer that you are reduced to being a ghostwriter for the money. "

" Orwell has always been a huge influence on me. "

" I used to love politics. I can't say I do any more. All the fun has gone out of it. Each side is engaged in this trench warfare of managerialism. They're all too scared to say anything that might make them appear something other than completely bland. "

" 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. "

" Unlike the Holocaust, Stalin's murders are forgotten: dust blowing in the wind. "

" The financial world is at the cutting edge of high technology. "

" Cut your manuscript ruthlessly but never throw anything away: it's amazing how often a discarded scene or description, which wouldn't fit in one place, will work perfectly later. "

" Leaders today are isolated by phalanxes of body guards. It's profoundly undemocratic, the way they have used terrorism as a means to protect themselves. "

" My literary career was a fluke. Utterly unexpected. "

" One gains a double benefit in writing about the past, conjuring up how things might have been, and at the same time acquiring a different perspective on the present. "

" The true currency of life is time, not money, and we've all got a limited stock of that. "

" I think a lot of us feel, when we look at the Dow Jones plunging, alienated - you do feel as if we're in the grip of some alien force that slipped human control. "

" I like to take people you wouldn't really think people would write novels about: an aqueduct engineer, a code-breaker, a hedge-fund manager. It's in those sorts of lives that I find more fascination than in a CIA operative or a Marine or something like that. "

" Politics is never a victory, it's just the remorseless grinding forward of events. "

" Within reason, I can write what I like and spend as long doing it as is necessary. That is a luxury beyond price. "