I simply couldn't walk away from [ The Nightingale].

Impatient men are generous ones. Or haven't you learned that by now?

The woman who led [downed airmen] was named Andrée De Jongh and her story - one of heroism and peril and astounding courage - became the inspiration for my novel.

I do not often follow my characters off on tangents or change my story on a whim. I have an outline which I follow quite sternly...for a good long while. Then it turns out in some way to be insurmountably wrong and I am forced to re-think every component. Usually at this point I throw hundreds of pages away.

In the end, there's only one thing you can believe. Bodies are honest; they don't lie.

You learned to run from what you feel, and that's why you have nightmares. To deny is to invite madness. To accept is to control.

Coming up with the idea is the worst part of writing for me.