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

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" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Storytelling has a narcotic power. "

" 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. "

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

" The financial markets tend to be just a backdrop for a novel, for a heist or something that isn't necessarily integral to it. On the whole, I don't think the financial world has been well served by novels. "

" 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. "

" 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? "