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.

I know that sounds ineffective and daunting, but it [throw hundreds of pages away] is actually my favorite part of the writing process.

Thematically, we're both [with Kristin Hannah ] interested in women's experiences and women's stories, and until now, you've mostly dealt with how it feels to be a wife/mother/sister/name your poison in today's world. But this story [The Nightingale ] is told from the perspective of two sisters during the German occupation of France in WWII.

Andrée De Jongh story led me to other stories of women who joined the Resistance in France. I found literally dozens of memoirs written by women who had become spies and couriers and helped to create the escape network. These women were like action-star heroes.

The only truth was whatever you could make someone believe.

I am one of those authors who believes (perhaps foolishly) that she is in complete control of the story.

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.