Sometimes I create a character from a scrap - a mere mention that has been left behind.

Very often the characters people respond to best have little parts of reality they can relate to.

I always thought that bagels and lox was my soul food, but it turns out it's sushi.

Books exist for me not as physical entities with pages and binding, but in the province of my mind.

Change occurs slowly. Very often a legal change might take place but the cultural shift required to really accept its spirit lingers in the wings for decades.

Research material can turn up anywhere - in a dusty old letter in an archive, a journal or some old photographs you find in a charity shop.

At length, when I considered it, I realized that the best of my actions were small things. Picking flowers and cooking food for my mother when she had been unwell, spending an afternoon with the children, sending money to my sister or kissing Henry's tiny head as he slept in the nursery before I left. I thought of every detail and afterwards I felt better. Hellfire and brimstone have never appealed to me and I admit I become easily confused thinking of right and wrong. But I do understand kindness.