People who wrote literary novels about the past probably didn't want them pegged as historical fiction. Certainly that was true in England.

The worship of Thomas More goes beyond Catholics.

I only became a novelist because I thought I had missed my chance to become a historian.

I will get into trouble, I am sure, because since my Kate Middleton speech and before, certain papers were after me. I am not saying, however, that it would have been moral or right to assassinate Mrs. [Margaret] Thatcher, but I know it will be read that way. I know it will cause a problem.

I think I would have been a reasonably good lawyer. I have a faculty for making sense of mountains of information.

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

So many years of preparation, for what was called adult life: was it for this?