I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.

It took me less than half a lifetime to realize that regret is one of the few guaranteed certainties. Sooner or later everything is touched by it despite our naive and senseless hope that just this time we will be spared its cold hand on our heart.

Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

Jealousy is bred in doubts. When those doubts change into certainties then the passion either ceases or turns absolute madness.

All business proceeds on beliefs or judgements of probabilities and not on certainties.

The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead.

The British political system and the whole clapped out Westminster architecture and the language that we use about politics it's completely unsustainable. You either decide to be part of that transition to do something different. Or you cling to old certainties.