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

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.

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

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

The easiest way to remember your future wife’s birthday is to marry her on Super Bowl Sunday.

I am a dead woman. Dead and insane.

You can't compare me with others, I am the most different.

Every time I play with someone, not just a new person, but someone I've been with all along, that's where I really learn.

Whenever you talk about writing I think you have to remember that it all has a big question mark over it - every word has a big question mark over it.

I've always had weird hair, and it's never looked good.

History - a vast Mississippi of falsehoods

Fretting springs from a determination to get our own way.

Our minds are shaped by the books we read. Our characters, by the people we meet. Our spirits by the love we give.

I still have a passion for the music, which is such a beautiful thing. I still wake up in the middle of the night out of a dream and have a melody in my head, and run to my piano.