'Show up at the desk' is one of the first rules of writing, but for 'Wolf Hall' I was about 30 years late.

I dislike pastiche; it attracts attention to the language only.

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

Fortitude. ... It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you.

Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.

Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.

If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.

The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.

I didn't cry much after I was 35, but staggered stony-faced into middle age, a handkerchief still in my bag just in case.

You're only young once, they say, but doesn't it go on for a long time? More years than you can bear.

One of the greatest advantages of singleness is the potential for greater focus on Christ and accomplishing work for Him.

in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night

I may be dead inside, but I'm more than alive enough for you." He gripped her chin and covered her mouth with his.

For anybody that works in any kind of demining or any kind of humanitarian aid work, there is danger and it's always a high-risk area [in Cambodia].

I hope that people can relate to my music, it's very relatable, it's very fun, it's very honest.

I was really more interested in dramatic work, but I thought, 'Well, I guess I could do comedy.

You program music with an image and then people are desensitized.

Pleasure blinds (so to speak) the eyes of the mind, and has no fellowship with virtue.

And I've got some screenplays and plays ready to dip into when I need to.

You live with someone until they accept that you are what you are, that you're not going to change and they love that about you - and then they decide to marry you, I guess.