I am a storyteller, not a historian, and it's my ambition to create something compelling - something unputdownable and riveting - that chimes with the real history but is, in fact, fiction.

It is through our extended family that we first learn to compromise and come to an understanding that even if we don't always agree about things we can still love and look out for each other.

I always thought that bagels and lox was my soul food, but it turns out it's sushi.

Something I notice speaking to writers from south of Hadrians Wall is that the culture is different. At base, I think Scotland values its creative industries differently from England.

I jealously guard my research time and I love fully immersing myself in those dusty old books and papers. It's one of the most enjoyable parts of my job.

The sky was a sparkling succession of black diamonds on black velvet made crystal clear by the blackout.

I believe the era of the militant lady is back.

Without archives many stories of real people would be lost, and along with those stories, vital clues that allow us to reflect and interpret our lives today.

Research material can turn up anywhere - in a dusty old letter in an archive, a journal or some old photographs you find in a charity shop.

Writers of novels live in a strange world where what's made up is as important as what's real.

Books have a vital place in our culture. They are the source of ideas, of stories that engage and stretch the imagination and most importantly, inspire.

He wanted to leave the past a few hundred miles down the road, shake it off like dust. But that ws the problem with the past. It kept finding him.

Abort the thought, save the baby

Be the great person you were always meant to be.

I love trade. I'm a free trader, 100 percent. But we [the USA] need smart people making the deals, and we don't have smart people making the deals.

We must always keep in mind all legitimate authority is from God, and is given for protection, provision, and peace.

Life is amazing, life is odd. Life is not what you expected it to be. Things happen... Growing up takes longer than you think.

Every word wants to be taken literally, else it decays into a lie. But one mustn't take any word literally, else the world becomes a madhouse.

While we cannot choose how we will die, we can always choose how we will live.

Society in its full sense . . . is never an entity separable from the individuals who compose it.

We became a band that was kind of a big band, kind of a band that quite uncool people listen to, people a lot like me. I've realized that's a much more beautiful fate than the plan I had.