I was asked the other day in which era I would choose to live. As a historical novelist, it comes up sometimes. As a woman I’d have to say I’d like to live in the...

Part of the desire to see each other succeed is to stop putting a price on success.

Who is better off? The one who writes to revel in the voluptuousness of the life that surrounds them? Or the one who writes to escape the tediousness of that which awaits them outside? Whose...

As a historical novelist, there are few jobs more retrospective.

With the right tools, you can write anything …

I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.

A novelist’s characters must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them.

If your not annoying somebody, you’re not alive.

I’m a novelist by trade and my job is to write a story rather than reconstruct actual events.

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.

Rich will be my life if I can keep my memories full and brimming, and record them on clear-eyed mornings while I set joyously to work setting pen to holy craft.

As a historical novelist, there is very little I like more than spending time sorting through boxes of old letters, diaries, maps, trinkets, and baubles.

You write once and you can call yourself a writer, but it takes three novels before you can call yourself a novelist. The first two could have just been lucky. One day, I will finish...

The moment I close my eyes, I see you and sleep vanishes. I’m awake the entire night, revisiting ourmemories together. The night seems to stretch on forever.

All novelists are.

I am not much of a researcher as a novelist; I write mainly from experience.

People make interesting assumptions about the profession. The writer is a mysterious figure, wandering lonely as a cloud, fired by inspiration, or perhaps a cocktail or two.

If you hear voices, you’re a lunatic. If you write down what they say, you’re an author.

I was forced to wander, having no one, forced by my nature to keep wandering because wandering was the only thing that I believed in, and the only thing that believed in me.

A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don’t...

Why are you behaving like this? You know how much I love you … and Ibelieve you love me as much, so why are you avoiding me?

It is possible to be a great novelist – that is, to render a veracious account of your times – and a bad writer – that is, an incompetent practitioner of applied linguistics.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

As a novelist it is my job to tell stories that inspire and entertain but I am increasingly mindful that many of these historical tales (which of themselves are fascinating) relate directly to our issues...

The lady who works in the grocery store at the corner of my block is called Denise, and she’s one of America’s great unpublished novelists. Over the years she’s written forty-two romantic novels, none of...

Passionate attraction to someone of the opposite sex will make a hero or a fool of a novelist each time.