What Do You Think Spies Are: Priests,

Only Esmeralda Was Not Weeping. Instead She Wore That Wooden Look That Whites Mistake For Churlishenss Or Indifference. Woodrew Knew It Was Neither. It Was Familiarity. This How Real Life Is Constituted, It Said. This Is Grief And Hatred And People Hacked To Death. This Is The Everyday We Have Known Since We Were Born And You Wazungu Have Not.

A Good Writer Can Watch A Cat Pad Across The Street And Know What It Is To Be Pounced Upon By A Bengal Tiger.

I Think That Most Of My Books Are Part Of Some Process Of Self-education, Often About The Places I Go To. Most Of All, They Are About The Peculiar Tension Between Institutional Loyalty And Loyalty To Oneself; The Mystery Of Patriotism, For A Brit Of My Age And Generation, Where It Runs, How It Should Be Defined, What It's Worth And What A Corrupting Force It Can Be When Misapplied. All That Stuff Is Just In Me And It Comes Out In The Characters. I Don't Mean To Preach, But I Know I Do, And I'm A Very Flawed Person. It's Quite Ridiculous.

Survival...is An Infinite Capacity For Suspicion.

I Grew Up In A Completely Bookless Household. It Was My Father's Boast That He Had Never Read A Book From End To End. I Don't Remember Any Of His Ladies Being Bookish. So I Was Entirely Dependent On My Schoolteachers For My Early Reading With The Exception Of The Wind In The Willows, Which A Stepmother Read To Me When I Was In Hospital.