I think crime writing is my link with trying to preserve a sort of order.

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.

I'm sorry to bother you, " she whispered. "When I get excited about a movie I want to talk. I can't help it.

After a while, just staying alive becomes a full-time job. No wonder we need a vacation.

I love, love, love the street-cart food. Gyros are like a meat-flavored fruit roll-up. A meat roll-up.

I want to be remembered as a happy, humble person, and as someone who motivated others to never give up.

Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!

Growing up, I never imagined I would be an actor.

How does this happen? To fall in love and be disassembled.

All effort is in the last analysis sustained by the faith that it is worth making.

I love Superman. Because he represents the hero with 1,000 faces. And the potential that lies in every human on this planet.

Discovering a richer quality of being-ness means to keep surrendering and letting go of resistance.