Happiness was useless to me. It was heartache that filled my purse. What happy man has need of Shakespeare?

Had you but seen it, I promise you, your high-minded principles would have melted like candle wax. Never would you have wished such beauty away.

Most of the mess that is called history comes about because kings and presidents cannot be satisfied with a nice chicken and a good loaf of bread.

But words are more powerful than anything.

I listened as the words became sentences and the sentences became pages and the pages became feelings and voices and places and people.

I could almost hear the characters inside, murmuring and jostling, impatient for me to open the cover and let them out.

I just love historical fiction.