War never accomplishes anything. It's never going to look good in the history books. People are never going to look back and think, 'He started a lot of wars; what a great leader he was!' That's not the way it works. God knows how many more of these things we're going to need before it starts to sink in.

The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.

The real war will never get in the books

Everything was going my way. I was happily marching into the history books. Then it all just fell apart.

To be in the history books of anything is fantastic,

Art needs to be socialised, and you need a lot of context to understand that, and that doesn't mean having read a few art history books.