Occupation: Novelist Birth: March 7, 1957
It implies a slight failure as a writer that you are reduced to being a ghostwriter for the money..
But only a fool sails into combat with nature.
Another of Cicero's maxims was that if you must do something unpopular, you might as well do it wholeheartedly, for in politics there is no credit to….
That young man seeks opportunities to test his principles as readily as a drunk picks fights in a bar..
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 fun….
If one first gives himself to the Lord, all other giving is easy..
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 mill….
Orwell has always been a huge influence on me..
It is perseverance, and not genius that takes a man to the top. Rome is full of unrecognized geniuses. Only perseverance enables you to move forward ….
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..
Politics is never a victory, it's just the remorseless grinding forward of events..
But clever people all make one mistake. They all think everyone else is stupid. And everyone isn't stupid. They just take a bit more time, that's all..
You can't make sense of the present unless a part of you lives in the past..
Cicero smiled at us. 'The art of life is to deal with problems as they arise, rather than destory one's spirit by worrying about them too far in adva….
Storytelling has a narcotic power..
The true currency of life is time, not money, and we've all got a limited stock of that..
Cicero most reminds me of Harold Wilson. Both men knew how to keep the show on the road..
I think that whenever a nation feels itself to be at is zenith, it starts to feel a creeping sense of anxiety..
You can't ever win the war on crime, or the war on terror. You can't repeal human nature..
A police state is a country run by criminals.
Egyptologists, skilled in piecing together the papyri of lost civilisations, suddenly discovered that the same talent could be applied to working out….