Watching live actors onstage, in something that changes night by night, real people picking up cues from each other, it concentrates you on the process rather than the result.

Every leader operates under the threat of assassination.

[Margaret Thatcher] scorned and despised other women, and predicated her values entirely on the values of her father, a small town shopkeeper.

Much historical fiction that centers on real people has always been deficient in information, lacking in craft and empty in affect.

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

You learn nothing about men by snubbing them and crushing their pride. You must ask them what it is they can do in this world, that they alone can do.

I am usually protective of my work, not showing it to anyone until it has been redrafted and polished.