You can't make accommodations in crucial situations and be heroic.

Wherever God has planted you, you must know how to flower - translated from a French saying

It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book. When I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I'm gonna do 320, that's 160 days.

One is what one has the nerve to pretend to be.

I don't really write plots. I use history as the engine that drives everything.

I read very little contemporary anything.

I don't inflict horrors on readers.