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

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.

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.

I love hearing details of writers' craft, as cannibals eat the brains of clever men to get cleverer.

For our generation walks as in Hades, without the divine.

God is not a dead equation!

For every monarchy overthrown the sky becomes less brilliant, because it loses a star. A republic is ugliness set free.

Each time I fail to think about death, I have the impression of cheating, of deceiving someone in me.

Sometimes you think you know things, know things very deeply, only to realize you don't know a damn thing.

A nonviolent struggle necessarily involves construction on a small scale. It cannot therefore lead to tamas or darkness or inertia.

Again and again, God's Word reveals that He is not as concerned about the depth or extent of the sin we commit as He is about our attitude and response when we are confronted with our sin.

The charismatics confused the holy liturgy with a school of samba, but than I was converted when I got to know them better and saw the good they do.

And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand, The hand that held the steel: For only blood can wipe out blood, And only tears can heal

Jennifer Palmieri and Joel Benenson and all these people on Hillary's [Clinton] side just can't come to grips with the fact that they lost.