Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience--buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello--become new all over again.

To say a person is a happy person or an unhappy person is ridiculous. We are a thousand different kinds of people every hour.

WWII is something contemporary readers already know a lot about. If our schools are doing their jobs, they know about the invasion of Normandy, the Hitler Youth, the Holocaust, and at least a few of the horrors of the Eastern Front.

I used to think...that I had to be careful with how much I lived. As if life was a pocketful of coins. You only got so much and you didn't want to spend it all in one place...But now I know that life is the one thing in the world that never runs out. I might run out of mine, and you might run out of yours, but the world will never run out of life. And we're all very lucky to be part of something like that.

Radio - and perhaps airplanes, and then of course, the atom bomb - was the preeminent technology of the first half of the 20th century. It was how the Third Reich controlled its citizens, spread lies, and disseminated fear.

For me, writing historical fiction is all about finding a balance between reading, traveling, looking, imagining, and dreaming.

I've been getting into Nick Drake lately, the folk singer. Sad, gorgeous stuff.