I realize that I had always in my heart of hearts planned to write a biography of 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.

You'll never come second by putting God first.

It is the true nature of mankind to learn from mistakes, not from example.

The man who does not wish to be one of the mass only needs to cease to be easy on himself.

Death, thou shalt die.

Clowns are always creepy!

Remember, half the people you know are below average.

I saw a seagull hanging out by a lake, but I said, "Don't worry, Dude. I won't say anything."

Asia's governments come in two broad varieties: young, fragile democracies - and older, fragile authoritarian regimes.

I never said I was a genius.

Ideas disturb the levelness of life