New technologies and resources offer exciting opportunities. They democratise access to information.

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.

I'm planning, you see, to try to confine myself to the truth. That's hard for an old, inveterate fantasy martyr and liar who has never hesitated to give truth the form he felt the occasion demanded.

Sometimes you have to "play the part" to become the part.

Man must have some recognized stake in society and affairs to knit him lovingly to his kind, or he is wont to revenge himself for wrongs real or imagined.

I know that unremitting attention to business is the price of success, but I don't know what success is.

Better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb than in the middle of some ladder you don’t, right?

To be a disciple of Jesus is to make disciples of Jesus.

I don't care about fashion, I care about women.

Journalism is the entertainment business.

The loss of memory isn't always the problem; sometimes--maybe even often--it's the solution.