When I was growing up, my idea of a writer was someone like Sven Hassel, that mysterious Danish author who wrote thrillers about men clambering over walls and getting tangled in barbed wire.

When I was growing up, there was a feeling in one's living room as much as in one's local gallery that a little elitism was good for the soul.

I've been asked which of the other arts novel-writing is most like, and I have come to believe it is acting. Of course, in terms of pattern it can be like music, in terms of structure it can be like painting, but the job to me is most like acting.

When you grow up by the sea, you spend a good deal of time looking at the horizon. You wonder what on Earth the waves might bring - and where the sea might deposit you - until one day you know you have lived between two places, the scene of arrival and the point of departure.

Nobody who's thought about politics or democracy over the thousands of years that people have been thinking about democracy hasn't come up against the fact that the people will often be wrong. And what do you do when they are? You can't just say, 'Well, it's the will of the people.'

State government has too often been used to look out for the insiders and not the citizens. This has insulated poverty from progress, and need from remedy.

I am not God. Nor am I Phantom. I am ready to accept any criticism. I have been in politics for decades. Each and every day, in several media, there is criticism of me.

In politics, the number of women in the cabinet has fallen and, if current poll trends continue and Labour loses a number of marginal seats, the number of female MPs is likely to drop significantly.