I love what I call "re-imagining," where I throw everything up in the air and let it fall in a different way. It's not the most efficient way to write a book, but it's how I find the story.

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

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.

My next guest [ for party with five favorite fictional characters] would be Scarlett from Gone With The Wind. I mean, come on, I have to know if she ever got Rhett back.

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.

To be honest, I wrote so many drafts of this book [ The Nightingale ] and changed the characters so many times; the real surprise is that I finished the book at all.

I love women being the heroes of the piece. There is just something so dramatic and important about this story [The Nightingale ].