Bulgarians eat tarator every single day in summer. They think of it as salad although we'd call it a soup. You can make it as thick or thin as you like depending on how much water you add. It's very practical in summer because yogurt cools the body faster than water, but the water hydrates you.

If there is any good in life, in history, in my own past, I invoke it now. I invoke it with all the passion with which I have lived.

...what will we someday do, I always wonder, without the pleasures of turning through books and stumbling on things we never meant to find?

I've noticed Dracula was often as practical a fellow as he was a nasty one.

I think it's important to recognise that 'The Da Vinci Code' opened up a vast new audience for a general readership interested in historical detective stories and research into history.

In the end, I always act from the heart, even if I also value reason and tradition. I wish I could explain why, but I don't know.

...History it seemed could be something entirely different a splash of blood whose agony didn't fade overnight or over centuries.