I've just finished my next collection Possible Side Effects and I'm now working on a collection of holiday stories as well as a memoir about my relationship with my father.

It is always a disappointment to turn from forthright consideration of some subject - whether from the Left or the Right a poet or a plumber - to the Beltway version in which the only aspects of the issue that matter are the effects it will have on the fortunes of the two parties and the various men in power.

'Charm' - which means the power to effect work without employing brute force - is indispensable to women. Charm is a woman's strength just as strength is a man's charm.

It's sort of a feeling of power onstage. It's really the ability to make people smile or just to turn them one way or another for that duration of time and for it to have some effect later on. I don't really think it's power... it's the goodness.

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

The strongest and most effective force in guaranteeing the long-term maintenance of power is not violence in all the forms deployed by the dominant to control the dominated but consent in all the forms in which the dominated acquiesce in their own domination.

The only positive finding which could be drawn from the first series was the conclusion that the relationships obviously had a more complicated lay-out than had been thought for the effects were so varied that no obedience to any law could be discovered.

To me success means effectiveness in the world that I am able to carry my ideas and values into the world - that I am able to change it in positive ways.

The news is what it is. It's going to be good it's going to be positive it's going to be negative. It's going to have all sorts of effects on candidates always.

Let's not dismiss or attack individual ideas as being inadequate before we have had a chance to assess their positive effect as part of a whole solution.