In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.

So history is fertile territory for me and I think I could feel happy with any period of history, provided I had the right sources and the necessary time for the initial research.

Never be satisfied with a first draft. In fact, never be satisfied with your own stuff at all, until you're certain it's as good as your finite powers can enable it to be.

There is something about the unexpected that moves us. As if the whole of existence is paid for in some way, except for that one moment, which is free.

Any setting can potentially acquire this vividness. It slowly arrives during the period of research, until it is as immediate to me as my own real surroundings.

Kept falling in and out of it [sleep] like out of a boat or a tipping hammock.

Life is not a dress rehearsal.