I've got so many ideas, and sometimes the more exhausted my body gets, the more active my mind gets.

He thinks, I remembered you, Thomas More, but you didn't remember me. You never even saw me coming.

Fiction leaves us so much work to do, allows the individual so much input; you have to see, you have to hear, you have to taste the madeleine, and while you are seemingly passive in your chair, you have to travel.

My first book was a historical novel. I started writing in 1974. In those days, historical novels meant ladies with swelling bosoms on the cover. Basically, it meant historical romance. It was not respectable as a genre.

I can't think of any male politician who magnetizes love and hate - mainly hate - the way [Margaret Thatcher] did.

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

History is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it.