I think it took me half a page of 'Wolf Hall' to think: 'This is the novel I should have been writing all along.'

I dislike pastiche; it attracts attention to the language only.

I am usually protective of my work, not showing it to anyone until it has been redrafted and polished.

If I am feeling broken, I can pick up one of [Ivy Compton-Burnett] books and the next morning I can write again. It puts my mechanism back.

She is very plain. What does Henry see in her?'" "He thinks she's stupid. He finds it restful.

I am not a historian. I don't see what I do as being a rival to biography.

When you have committed enough words to paper, you feel you have a spine stiff enough to stand up in the wind. But when you stop writing, you find that's all you are - a spine, a row of rattling vertebrae, dried out like an old quill pen.