The unfolding of a story is both as exciting and as difficult for each and every novel I've written, regardless of time and place.

When an idea comes, spend silent time with it. Remember Keats's idea of Negative Capability and Kipling's advice to "drift, wait and obey". Along with your gathering of hard data, allow yourself also to dream your idea into being.

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

Learn from cinema. Be economic with descriptions. Sort out the telling detail from the lifeless one. Write dialogue that people would actually speak.

When you've finished a piece of work you've had a kind of love affair with 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.

Life should be embraced like a lover.