If You Have A Good Story Idea,

Insights Don't Usually Arrive At My Desk, But Go Into Notebooks When I'm On The Move. Or Half-asleep.

When You Are Writing Laws You Are Testing Words To Find Their Utmost Power. Like Spells, They Have To Make Things Happen In The Real World, And Like Spells, They Only Work If People Believe In Them.

[margaret Thatcher] Was Pretending That Running A Country Was Like Running A Household, Which She Knew Wasn't True.

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.

We Have A Number Of Very Powerful Women In The World Now - Mrs. [angela] Merkel, Who The Germans Call Mutti. What Did We Call Mrs. [margaret] Thatcher? When She Was Minister Of Education, She Stopped The Children's Free School Milk. This May Sound Quaint, But After The War We Were Such A Malnourished Nation That Part Of The Founding Of The Welfare State Were Public Health Initiatives. Every Little Schoolchild Got Milk. Mrs. Thatcher Stopped It. They Called Her "maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher."