I see the emphasis on a lot of ideas and I know that's directed at me. [Megan Chance] come up with an idea, hone it, and write it. I come up with thirty ideas, flesh each one out, research each one, come up with characters, and then decide I don't like it.

With The Nightingale, I had been kicking the idea around for years. I was frightened to write it because on the surface it seems so different for me.

The answers are what they are. Just because you don't like them doesn't mean they aren't true.

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

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.

Honestly, I really didn't want to take on World War II France, but when I came across the story of a nineteen-year-old Belgian woman who created an escape route out of Nazi-Occupied France, I was hooked.

Trying to justify a world we don't hold all the answers to is what bedevils the best of us. Sometimes it's better just to accept that things are as we see them.