I’m drawn to the 1950s for lots of reasons – everything from the fashion to the increasing sense of freedom and modernity that builds throughout the decade.

If peace came it would have to do so when there had been time to allow the hatred to grow out of people’s thinking.

I didn’t want to give up my job and join the ranks of the Doing Fuck All brigade no matter how much money I had in the bank.

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.

Many existing top 20 Scottish writers have flourished in part because of good turns done by institutions, arts community, libraries and bookshops.

I love writing, and just as much, I love undertaking research.

Reticence was clearly a national characteristic, even if the other person spoke French.

You’ve got to make an effort to get the details right, because even through someone picks it up and knows it’s a novel, they know someone’s made it up and they know it’s not real,...

The mass communications that could enable our politics for good have instead turned it into a bland conglomeration of stinted opinion cloaked in the occasional media frenzy of blame or denial.

Our business is communication oftentimes through the medium of stories but our capacity has a far greater scope – to entertain certainly, but also to stimulate debate, to mark up changes and differences and that...

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

You have no future when the past rules you.

Mirabelle was always an enigma, and he had the sense that if he pushed her, she’d bolt.

It’s entirely possible to base an entire book on a long-forgotten letter.

I remember calling the council’s cemetery department to ask about body decomposition in different soil types. Once they had verified that I was a novelist and not a sicko, they were extremely helpful.

The atmosphere felt unexpectedly intense and the music was frantic. The beat made it both difficult to think straight and pleasant to move – like swimming almost.

As a reader you recognise that feeling when you’re lost in a book? You know the one – when whatever’s going on around you seems less real than what you’re reading and all you want...

Kindness was too painful. It had been a long time since he had had to endure it.

Archive material is vital to the writer of historical fiction.

I didn’t expect to love being online as much as I do. I’ve met some wonderful people and discovered that however arcane some of my interests that there are people out there who are interested...

Writing is such a solitary occupation that it takes a long time to build up a group of professional peers with whom you genuinely identify.

Parts of my 20s and 30s have gone by in a flash but my childhood is with me all the time.

Lately Mirabelle had reflected wistfully if people even noticed her – a smartly dressed woman who came and went along the Promenade, always alone.

Writing about the 1950s has given me tremendous respect for my mother’s generation.

The library is a symbol of freedom.

Most people do a good deal of whatever they do motivated by love. For me, few stories are truly complete without it.

I can’t bear literary snobbery.

The question shouldn’t be, ‘Are we guilty about our Colonial past?’ it should be, ‘Why aren’t we more guilty about our corporate present?

That boy is talented. You don’t develop those gifts in houses or in schools.

It’s part of a writer’s job to be nosy about everything.

Edinburgh is a great big black bastard of a city where there are ghosts of all kinds.

One of my favourite parts of writing is doing the research. It’s the door into that magical reading/writing state – the raw material for making the story real.

There is something particularly fascinating about seeing places you know in a piece of art – be that in a film, or a photograph, or a painting.

He tasted of whisky and his skin was rough where he hadn’t shaved, but Mirabelle kissed him back.

While what I write is always largely consistent with the records that remain I freely admit that where historical fact proves a barrier to invention, I simply move a detail a little one way or...

Our archives are treasure troves – a testament to many lives lived and the complexity of the way we move forward. They contain clues to the real concerns of day-to-day life that bring the past...

The good thing about the aristocracy – German or English – was that they were easily traced, Mirabelle thought.

You became the sum total of where you lived, where you shopped, which church you went to, how many kids you had and which taxi company you used, and you only associated with people who...

I realised early on that being an author is a hugely misunderstood job.

I fancy you, Kitty Dawson,” a lone boy shouted.

To me, reading through old letters and journals is like treasure hunting. Somewhere in those faded, handwritten lines there is a story that has been packed away in a dusty old box for years.

You couldn’t see the soldiers as people. They were icons.

The best historical stories capture the modern imagination because they are, in many senses, still current – part of a continuum.

Jack had been the love of her life and he was gone. It seemed now that there had never been bad times, though she knew that wasn’t true.

The new contract between writers and readers is one I’m prepared to sign up to. I’ve met some fascinating people at events and online. Down with the isolation of writers I say! And long live...

We are home to each other now.

Today women have the rights and equality our Victorian sisters could only dream of, and with those privileges comes the responsibility of standing up and being counted.

I thought of myself mixing the fragrance of a certain day – the heavy musk of the hillside after the rain with the lightness of fresh blossoms doused in the downpour. I thought of each...

Nothing is long ago in an archive, my dear. In the records we treat the dead as same as the living. that’s the whole point of keeping papers. It doesn’t matter if it’s a hundred...

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