If you know somebody is going to be awfully annoyed by something you write, that's obviously very satisfying, and if they howl with rage or cry, that's honey.
I don't think you can tell the objective truth about a person. That's why people write novels.
If you imagine writing 1,000 words a day, which most journalists do, that would be a very long book a year.
I don't write books inadvertently.
My kind publishers, Toby Mundy and Margaret Stead of Atlantic Books, have commissioned me to write the life of Queen Victoria.
Everyone writes in Tolstoy's shadow, whether one feels oneself to be Tolstoyan or not.
