Like a historian, I interpret, select, discard, shape, simplify. Unlike a historian, I make up people's thoughts.

Once you're labeled as mentally ill, and that's in your medical notes, then anything you say can be discounted as an artefact of your mental illness.

A novel should be a book of questions, not a book of answers.

By the tits of Holy Agnes

It's complementary. It's fairly clear where the boundaries are. When I start telling you the contents of his head, I am making it up. But I try to make it up based on what is on the record. So even my wildest speculations [on Thomas Cromwell] will have a root somewhere.

Though I have never thought of myself as a book collector, there are shelves in our house browsed so often, on so many rainy winter nights, that the contents have seeped into me as if by osmosis.

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