“You think I look like a teletubby?”

The worst thing about being a great power is when you’re not one any more. It takes centuries to get over it.

I think it is very difficult to legislate for morality.

We’ve all got to look at ourselves, start with yourself, that’s all you can do. I believe that we can act responsibly as a group, it’s just that there are vested interests telling us not to bother.

I try hard not to preach, but I get carried away, which is a mistake, but it’s a risk worth running.

The earth only has so much bounty to offer and inventing ever larger and more notional prices for that bounty does not change its real value.

My parents were secular. I am an atheist.

The Germans are a cruel race. Their operas last for six hours and they have no word for fluffy.

You’re mugging old ladies every bit as much if you pinch their pension fund

I exercise hard and the reason I do is so that I can earn the things I like to consume.

And of course to hunt down sedition. Only paper is safe. Books are the key. A book cannot be accessed from afar, you have to hold it, you have to read it.

My advice to anyone adapting a novel is that once they’ve read it and learnt to understand it, then they must throw it away and never look at it again!

This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence.

I’m easy to work with, not a pushover, but I respond to criticism and find it inspiring.

For the past seventeen years I have been experimenting with lager. I am a lager user and one drug leads to another. If you do lager, as night follows day, you’ll end up doing Kentucky Fried Chicken.

There are lots of things I could have done for the money, but I’ve made a great living doing the things I want to do.

I loved writing ‘Two Brothers’ more than anything else I have written. It’s the first book I’ve written that I’ve always known I wanted to write. Having said that, it also kept me awake at nights.

I like clean-cut, very proper, very elegant looks.

Writing is like a bird-watcher watching for birds: the stories are there: you just have to train yourself to look for them.

I don’t think I know a single woman who knows what she looks like.

…don’t ask me why I know what an Edwardian smoking jacket looks like: let’s just say it has something to do with Doctor Who and leave it at that.

I look to an out gay man or woman as pretty much what I would aspire to. The strength that it takes to do that and the floodgates that open and what they pay for it.

It took me 10 years to write a story that pleased me – that I could look at after it was published and not cringe.

If a teacher wants to know something why doesn’t she look it up herself instead of making we students do it? We benefit ourselves more by listening to her, after all she’s the teacher!

I always finish off my look with a spritz of Vera Wang Pink Princess.