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.

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.

I think The Nightingale is my best, most mature, most moving novel, but maybe that's just because I love these characters. I love the setting.

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

Sometimes a story grabs hold of you and won't let go.

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.

Historical tends to be my bailiwick.