I'm very interested in good and evil and the moral natures of people.

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

You have the capacity to do the work.Find the willpower to begin work.

Strange looks everything for a stranger!

There are people who are always anticipating trouble and in this way they manage to enjoy many sorrows that never really happen.

My work requires acting at its most committed - it demands actors of enormous resilience, but also intelligence and wit. It doesn't work for narcissistic or selfish actors.

I write books, I write for comic books, I give lectures... I live. And when the opportunity comes to do a picture, I do a picture.

People often become actresses because of something they dislike about themselves: They pretend they are someone else.

Artistically, I find jokes really satisfying aesthetically, because there's something great about getting an idea down to a sentence or two.

The key to fostering connection in the face of a 'no' is always hearing 'yes' to something else.

I love my body because it's what I've been given. Being too thin is just as unhealthy as being obese.

Vow to be valiant. Resolve to be radiant. Determine to be dynamic. Strive to be sincere. Aspire to be attuned.