Hindsight's a wonderful thing. If we all had it there would be no history to write about.

Whatever happens to you, embrace it, the good and the bad equally. Death is just one more thing to be embraced.

Men had no purpose on earth whereas women were gods walking unrecognized among them.

I don't have goals when writing books, apart from getting to the end. I have rather vague ideas about how I want things to feel, I'm big on ambience. I have a title, a beginning and a probable ending and go from there.

Julia's vocabulary was "chock-full" of strangely archaic words - "spiffing," "crumbs," "jeepers" - that seemed to have originated in some prewar girls' annual rather than in Julia's own life. For Jackson, words were functional, they helped you get to places and explain things. For Julia, they were freighted with inexplicable emotion.

Sylvia loved secrets and even if she didn't have any secrets she made sure that you thought she did. Amelia had no secrets, Amelia knew nothing. When she grew up she planned to know everything and to keep it all a secret.

In the end, it is my belief, words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.