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

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" It's easy enough to get into power. You can make promises and try to be all things to all people. But the moment you have to make decisions, you're going to annoy at least half of them. Whatever you do, in the end you're almost certain to be brought down by your own character traits. "

" My parents were interested in history and the world. My father read Graham Greene and Georges Simenon and was a strong trade unionist and Labour supporter. "

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

" If one tries to think about history, it seems to me - it's like looking at a range of mountains. And the first time you see them, they look one way. But then time changes, the pattern of light shifts. Maybe you've moved slightly, your perspective has changed. The mountains are the same, but they look very different. "

" 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. "

" Writers of fiction should stick to writing, not pop up on panel shows or as a talking head. "

" One cannot see any world leader who has got a grip on the financial markets these days. They're too big, too fast. I think that's quite scary. "

" Having the urge to write a novel, especially if you've yet to be published, is like having a medical condition impossible to mention in polite company - it's a relief simply to know there are fellow-sufferers out there. "

" You know, you can be really quite subversive in popular fiction, which is capable of taking on big issues of politics, war, the rise and fall of commercial dynasties. "

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

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

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

" Writing a novel - unlike operating a piece of heavy machinery, say, or cooking a chicken - is not a skill that can be taught. There is no standard way of doing it, just as there is no means of telling, while you're doing it, whether you're doing it well or badly. And merely because you've done it well once doesn't mean you can do it well again. "

" 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. "

" We say, 'The market plummets,' like it's some roaring creature. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I think it's very, very hard not to go slightly crazy if you're in the top in politics - especially if you're there for a long time. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" To tell a good story and to illuminate the world: the two things are completely linked. That is the point. That is what I've always wanted to do. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "