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

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" It's when you've stopped writing and are doing other things, especially when you're asleep, that the real work is done. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" We live in an age of great jitteriness in the financial markets. And there's no doubt at all, I think, that the volume of computer-traded stocks has helped contribute to that. "

" 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. "

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

" Storytelling has a narcotic power. "

" 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. "