You know I don’t listen to market gossip,” she began, “but it is hard not to hear it when my daughter’s name is mentioned.

I have consistently loved books that I've read when I've been sick in bed.

So many (too many) books are published every year, and it seems everyone is writing a book. Perhaps we should all be reading more and writing less!

I read a lot of fantasy. I adored 'Anne of Green Gables'. But my favourite books as a child were probably Laura Ingalls Wilder's 'Little House' series, about a pioneer family in the mid-19th-century American west. I often thought of them as I was writing 'The Last Runaway'.

The sign of a masterpiece: A painting when there's a lack of resolution.

I wanted to wear the mantle and the pearls. I wanted to know the man who painted her like that.

It's those little daily incidents of life that are dramatic, and if you put a frame around it , suddenly they become much bigger and much more important than you ever imagined.