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

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" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Storytelling has a narcotic power. "

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

" I was a political journalist; I came to writing novels through an interest in politics and power. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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