Wisdom worth sharing, words worth remembering.
History keeps her secrets longer than most of us. But she has one secret that I will reveal to you tonight in the greatest confidence. Sometimes there are no winners at all. And sometimes nobody needs to lose.
You have no idea how humiliating it was as a boy to suddenly have all your clothes your toys snatched by the bailiff. I mean we were a middle-class family it's not as if it was happening up and down the street. It made me ashamed I felt dirty.
I was quite able at the insignificant work I did in MI6 but absolutely dysfunctional in my domestic life. I had no experience of fatherhood. I had no example of marital bliss or the family unit.
A spy like a writer lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.
The monsters of our childhood do not fade away neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither in my experience do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat.
More particularly having a largely German-oriented education has made me very responsive to 19th-century German literature.
I mean I'm in the business of storytelling not message making.
I don't know whether it's age or maturity but I certainly find myself committed more and more to the looser forms of Western democracy at any price.
When you're my age and you see a story you better go for it pretty quickly. I'd just like to get a few more novels under my belt.
By the age of 9 or 10 I knew that I had to cut my own cloth and make my own way.