“Alliances are political certainties and there is rhyme and reason to that. The polls may be already next year but personally I think it’s not yet the right time to be busy about political shopping.”

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 4, Reformers Only Mornin’ Glories

Source: On the indirect relationship between literature and politics in “Cristina Henriquez Talks 'The Book of Unknown Americans,' POC vs. MFA, and Compassion” https://www.bustle.com/articles/27838-cristina-henriquez-talks-the-book-of-unknown-americans-poc-vs-mfa-and-compassion in Bustle (2014 Jun 13)

De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: I don’t know quite what I mean by my own metaphor, but I have feeling, it may bring in an even greater, faster space of fluid transmission, where no structures, as we used to understand structure, will sustain itself – we will have to come up with new notions of structure where things can change by the moment. I’m talking about physical structures, political structures, I can’t see coherent political structures in the traditional sense lasting beyond the next twenty years, I don’t think that would be possible.

Lines on his Promised Pension; reported in Thomas Fuller, Worthies of England, vol ii, page 379, and in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

"The Face Game" (p.215)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

XXIX, A Fit of Rhyme Against Rhyme
The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640), Underwoods

Interview in The Times, 28 July 2018.

Source: The Crimson Crown

Source: On balancing pessimism and optimism in “Kamila Shamsie: 'We have to find reasons for optimism’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/08/kamila-shamsie-we-have-to-find-reasons-for-optimism-home-fire in The Guardian (2018 Jun 8)