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 mother was a politician in my formative years.

I can't read historical fiction because I find the real thing so much more interesting.

I'm very interested in good and evil and the moral natures of people.

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.

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