I can't read historical fiction because I find the real thing so much more interesting.

I think there has been a great deal of valuable revisionism in women's history.

The clue to book jacket photography is to look friendly and approachable, but not too glamorous.

Lives in previous centuries for women are largely a matter of class. It would have been fun to have been a rich, privileged woman in the 18th century, but no fun at all to be her maid.

I am re-reading Henry James as a change from history. I began with Daisy Miller, and I've just finished Washington Square. What a brilliant, painful book.

My advantage as a woman and a human being has been in having a mother who believed strongly in women's education. She was an early undergraduate at Oxford, and her own mother was a doctor.

That is my major concern: writers who are in prison for writing.

The concentration in my book on Marie Antoinette's childhood and on her family influences. It is surprising how some books actually start with her arrival in France!

Normally I make myself swim, do exercises. For zest I like going to the cinema.

I decided as usual that justice lay in the middle - that is to say nowhere.

I love hearing details of writers' craft, as cannibals eat the brains of clever men to get cleverer.

Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world.

Now, the education of our children is of national concern, and if they are not educated properly, it is a national calamity.

No man is so insignificant as to be sure his example can do no hurt.

I understand being less sexy than Osama bin Laden, but not less sexy than Carrot Top. That, I find offensive.

If people would but provide for eternity with the same solicitude and real care as they do for this life, they could not fail of heaven.

Without entrepreneurs, economies become poor and weak. The old will not exist, the new can't enter

All in the golden afternoon Full leisurely we glide; For both our oars, with little skill, By little arms are plied, While little hands make vain pretence Our wanderings to guide.

My children, if you desire perseverance, be devout to our Blessed Lady.

The way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we must see it on the tight-rope.

If the body be feeble, the mind will not be strong.