‘We all learn on the job, and writing is no exception. It is said of novels that if you know what you’re going to say before you say it, you won’t produce a good novel. The same, to my mind, is true of writing a column.
‘You need to snake your way to meaning, find out what’s true, or at least more true than false, in the course of saying it, allow the words to discover the passion, not the passion dictate the words. The reason ideology leads us astray is that it is the expression of made-up minds. The best novels surprise their authors and the best columns end up somewhere the columnist never expected to go.’