You would go mad if you began to speculate about the impact your novel might have while you were still writing it.

Contemporary Britain seems an endlessly fascinating place to me - but if I knew a little bit more about other places, and other times, maybe it wouldn't.

My only regret is that I signed away the world rights and in America they've been far and away my most successful books, but I never saw a cent from any of it.

It seems to me that you would have to write a novel on a very small, intimate scale for it not to become political.

Just being able to grind, day in and day out. You have to be a different kind of person to not just do the workouts, but to not make money for months at a time.

People spend money on sports, and I just don't do golf, I hate it. But I love sailing and the technology aspect.

A lot of people can raise money.

To see poor people, their benefits being cut, to see pensions of Americans who have worked like my father, all their lives, and taken away, to see the rich just accumulating more and more wealth. I mean, it seems to me that there has to be a point where you have to say, 'No, this has to stop.'