Occupation: Writer Birth: July 6, 1952
I believe this was [Margaret Thatcher] estimate of the voter: "These people are so stupid that they will vote for me because they think I know how to….
[Margaret Thatcher] scorned and despised other women, and predicated her values entirely on the values of her father, a small town shopkeeper..
People who wrote literary novels about the past probably didn't want them pegged as historical fiction. Certainly that was true in England..
I can't think of any male politician who magnetizes love and hate - mainly hate - the way [Margaret Thatcher] did..
By the tits of Holy Agnes.
If I am feeling broken, I can pick up one of [Ivy Compton-Burnett] books and the next morning I can write again. It puts my mechanism back..
In my 20s I was in constant pain from undiagnosed endometriosis. With no prospect of a cure, I decided I needed a career - writing - that could accom….
The worship of Thomas More goes beyond Catholics..
The weight of the old world is stifling, and trying to shovel its weight off your life is tiring just to think about. The constant shuttling of opini….
You think you're writing one historical novel and it turns into three, and I'm quite used to a short story turning into a novel - that's happened thr….
Some readers read a book as if it were an instruction manual, expecting to understand everything first time, but of course when you write, you put in….
Cravats grow higher, as if they mean to protect the throat. The highest cravats in public life will be worn by Citizen Antoine Saint-Just, of the Nat….
To me, Hillary [Clinton] looks alright. She looks like the kind of woman I admire. She doesn't seem to have distorted her essential nature..
But an experienced reader is also a self-aware and critical reader. I can't remember ever reading a story without judging it..
Fear of commitment lies behind the fear of writing..
If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise; whatever you….
The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is ….
[Margaret Thatcher] was pretending that running a country was like running a household, which she knew wasn't true..
The writer I adore is Ivy Compton-Burnett.I couldn't get more than a few pages in when I first read her. In many ways, she is very clumsy and her plo….
Fiction leaves us so much work to do, allows the individual so much input; you have to see, you have to hear, you have to taste the madeleine, and wh….
When you become published and become a reviewer, piles of books come along and you are pushed by fashion and what you are commissioned to do..