To my astonishment, when Wolf Hall came out, people asked if I made it up - [Thomas More] burning of heretics. It was well documented. And he was proud of it! The Brits love lost causes.

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.

You can flourish by faith.

What makes night within us may leave stars.

Chinese government is very clearly losing power in every aspect, but trying to fix up all the problems or potential problems.

I do a lot of sexy publicity, but I have yet to have any bad experiences regarding jealousy.

A sound waiting to be a word.

My heart goes out to the grieving parents who lost their two-year-old or their newborn.

I have a wonderful editor who believes in fiction and poetry. She herself is a novelist and poet.

When we began Starbucks, what I wanted to try to do was to create a set of values, guiding principles, and culture.

Success tastes that much sweeter when you have people to share it with.

When you find an idea that you just can't stop thinking about, that's probably a good one to pursue.