Why was it, Lloyd wondered, that the people who wanted to destroy everything good about their country were the quickest to wave the national flag?

Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.

My favorite period is World War II, and I'm in the middle of writing my fourth novel set in that era.

I enjoy learning technical details.

Everybody takes what they life from the teachings of the church, and ignores the parts that don't suit them.

I went and looked at one of these great cathedrals one day, and I was blown away by it. From there I became interested in how cathedrals were built, and from there I became interested in the society that built the medieval cathedral. It occurred to me at some point that the story of the building of a cathedral could be a great popular novel.

There was a very serious communist strain among American intellectuals before the war. America was a more tolerant place in those days, and Communists were not treated as pariahs. That ended with the McCarthy era.