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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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 greatest regret as a writer is that I've never been able to include as many jokes as I'd like. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" I can't get very excited about the House of Commons these days because I don't feel the power is there. What is really bizarre is that you sense it is not in Washington either. It is now very hard even to locate the levers of power, let alone to pull them and change things. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" If you go back, 'The Great Gatsby' would be a portrait of the rich and fortune made by business. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

" Storytelling has a narcotic power. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "