An aunt is a safe haven for a child. Someone who will keep your secrets and is always on your side.

It is through our extended family that we first learn to compromise and come to an understanding that even if we don't always agree about things we can still love and look out for each other.

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

Something I notice speaking to writers from south of Hadrians Wall is that the culture is different. At base, I think Scotland values its creative industries differently from England.

I jealously guard my research time and I love fully immersing myself in those dusty old books and papers. It's one of the most enjoyable parts of my job.

The sky was a sparkling succession of black diamonds on black velvet made crystal clear by the blackout.

I believe the era of the militant lady is back.

Without archives many stories of real people would be lost, and along with those stories, vital clues that allow us to reflect and interpret our lives today.

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.

Writers of novels live in a strange world where what's made up is as important as what's real.

Books have a vital place in our culture. They are the source of ideas, of stories that engage and stretch the imagination and most importantly, inspire.

The ones who constantly make us laugh are the hardest of friends to know - for comedians are the caricatures among us.

God save me from my friends - I can protect myself from my enemies.

Gardening gloves are for sissies. I always have dirt under my nails.

When you lack interest in the case the job will very likely lack skill and diligence in the performance.

Although feelings are not supposed to intrude on business discussions, they do anyway - we just disguise them as logic.

It does mean, if this is the idea, the end of Britain as an independent European state...it means the end of a thousand years of history.

The more you love what you are doing, the more successful it will be for you.

It is for you and me to show that no vice is inherent in man.

To be envied is a nobler fate than to be pitied.

No matter how great a writer, artist, or entrepreneur, he is a mortal, he is fallible. He is not proof against Resistance. He will drop the ball; he will crash. That’s why they call it rewriting.