Fortitude. ... It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you.

Florence and Milan had given him ideas more flexible than those of people who'd stayed at home.

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

You think you're writing one historical novel and it turns into three, and I'm quite used to a short story turning into a novel - that's happened through my whole career.

It is all very well planning what you will do in six months, what you will do in a year, but it’s no good at all if you don’t have a plan for tomorrow.

I'm one of these children who grew up at the knee of my grandmother and her elder sister, listening to very old people talk about their memories.

I didn't cry much after I was 35, but staggered stony-faced into middle age, a handkerchief still in my bag just in case.