I realize that I had always in my heart of hearts planned to write a biography of Marie Antoinette.

I'm glad I was never an heiress.

My advantage as a woman and a human being has been in having a mother who believed strongly in women's education. She was an early undergraduate at Oxford, and her own mother was a doctor.

The concentration in my book on Marie Antoinette's childhood and on her family influences. It is surprising how some books actually start with her arrival in France!

I love hearing details of writers' craft, as cannibals eat the brains of clever men to get cleverer.

I have seen all, I have heard all, I have forgotten all. marie antoinette

I think there's a tremendous split between people who've been through a war and people who haven't.