I have seen all, I have heard all, I have forgotten all. marie antoinette

I think there has been a great deal of valuable revisionism in women's history.

The clue to book jacket photography is to look friendly and approachable, but not too glamorous.

Lives in previous centuries for women are largely a matter of class. It would have been fun to have been a rich, privileged woman in the 18th century, but no fun at all to be her maid.

I am re-reading Henry James as a change from history. I began with Daisy Miller, and I've just finished Washington Square. What a brilliant, painful book.

My advantage as a woman and a human being has been in having a mother who believed strongly in women's education. She was an early undergraduate at Oxford, and her own mother was a doctor.

I can't read historical fiction because I find the real thing so much more interesting.

That is my major concern: writers who are in prison for writing.

The concentration in my book on Marie Antoinette's childhood and on her family influences. It is surprising how some books actually start with her arrival in France!

Normally I make myself swim, do exercises. For zest I like going to the cinema.

I decided as usual that justice lay in the middle - that is to say nowhere.

If you are not open to the unprecedented, you will repeat history. If you are open to the unprecedented, you will change history. The difference is prayer.

All pain seemed to come with lots of blood, and lots of mental anguish, too. I already knew about that. Maybe that was the worst kind of pain, because nobody knew about it but you.

Genius thinks out of box when leader adjusts the size of box.

There are so many different walks of life, so many different personalities in the world. And no longer do you have to be a chameleon and try and adapt to that environment - you can truly be yourself.

Women are impossible, witches are worse, and women who are powerful witches are going to be the death of me.

The Self awakens only as he contacts the Earth.

I feel like I've had a really great intense relationship with every single Director I've ever worked with. I can't say there's one that hasn't been deep and profound in its own way.

Now I'm fighting cancer, everybody knows that. People ask me all the time about how you go through your life and how's your day, and nothing is changed for me.

Chronic negative thinking and the emotions it invokes is, like many destructive behaviors, a form of addiction... it may not be very pleasant, but it's familiar.

Fiction takes us to places that we would never otherwise go, and puts us behind eyes that are not our own.