I am more than happy to invite my five favorite fictional characters. Let's see. First on my list is Sam Gamgee from The Lord of The Rings. Sam is a beautiful character; in him, we find the profound heroism of an ordinary person. He epitomizes the saying that courage isn't not being afraid, courage is going anyway. I just love that.

It felt like an oversight to me, something that needed to be corrected. They [women who hid Jewish children] deserved to be understood and remembered.

People forget that old women were young once, but d'you think we old women forget? In my heart, I'm still thirty.

Calling it lunacy makes it easier to explain away the things we don't understand.

[ The Nightingale ]ended up being a huge undertaking - a daunting amount of research on a subject that many people know intimately, a country I had not yet been to when I first started planning the book, an entire war.

[I am more than happy to invite my five favorite fictional characters.]Roland Deschain from Stephen King's Dark Tower series. There's a whole world about Roland left to know. I've got questions. He'd have answers. So pour him a glass of wine.

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