I used to think that when I set out that doing the research was enough! But then the gaps would emerge that could only be filled by the imagination. And imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you.

Back in my 20s, when I wrote 'A Place of Greater Safety,' the French Revolution novel, I thought, 'I'll always have to write historical novels because I can't do plots.'' But in the six years of writing that novel, I actually learned to write, to invent things.

Sometimes peace looks like war, you cannot tell them apart.

Fear of commitment lies behind the fear of writing.

As a writer, you owe it to yourself not to get stuck in a rut of looking at the world in a certain way.

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

History is a set of skills rather than a narrative.