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.

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

If I write that it was a cold day, you can be sure I know it was a cold day because Pepys told us.

We are privileged. There are poor people out there. We must to do something to make them privileged.

I have no plans for a future Jemima Shore mystery, but would write one tomorrow if a good idea came to me.

After Mary Queen of Scots, I turned to the farthest subject possible: Cromwell.

Mary Queen of Scots was my first love, and that is always something special.

Ninety-seven is my lucky number.

I think there's a tremendous split between people who've been through a war and people who haven't.

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!

I think crime writing is my link with trying to preserve a sort of order.

I'm very interested in good and evil and the moral natures of people.

My mother was a politician in my formative years.

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

I don't like it, but this afternoon I've told myself I am going to go and get a dress.

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'm glad I was never an heiress.

People in my books tend to get their just deserts, even if not at the hands of the police.

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.

As long as you persecute people, you will actually throw up terrorism.

I hate the only one of my book jackets when I was made up professionally, my hair made into a smooth bell.

I think mine is the fullest and most plausible account of what went on in Marie Antoinette's life.

My mother, who was quite sharp when I was young, became utterly mild.

It can be a long gap between the emergence of fully researched historical biographies.

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.

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

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.

King Charles II liked women's company and well as making love to them.

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

We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution.

I must stress here the point that I appreciate clarity, order, meaning, structure, rationality: they are necessary to whatever provisional stability we have, and they can be the agents of gradual and successful change.

Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.

So, first you have to be able to play with a metronome. Then you take your freedom. If you play in an orchestra, you got to watch the conductor, he is like a metronome, but it is more difficult because he can change rhythms.

I wouldn't change Buffy for anything and I wouldn't change the course in which she has evolved but it is nice to be able to do something that is a little different.

For example, UNICEF works with governments to change legislation such as in India where a law was passed raising the age of compulsory school completion to keep children in school and away from the workplace for longer.

Great joy, especially after a sudden change of circumstances, is apt to be silent, and dwells rather in the heart than on the tongue.

I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.

Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while.

You don't have to be the Dalai Lama to tell people that life's about change.

I knew that my staying up would not change the election result if I were defeated, while if elected I had a hard day ahead of me. So I thought a night's rest was best in any event.

It will always be a battle a day between those who want maximum change and those who want to maintain the status quo.

Being a father, well, I don't know if this is a change, but it makes me want to get out of here faster. Get off the clock. Just 'cause the baby is my reason for living, my reason for coming to work.

A liberal knows that the only certainty in this life is change but believes that the change can be directed toward a constructive end.

I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.

In their search for quality, people seem to be looking for permanency in a time of change.

The game has kept faith with the public, maintaining its old admission price for nearly thirty years while other forms of entertainment have doubled and tripled in price. And it will probably never change.

One day I actually took the list into the bathroom and I put it up against my face and looked in the mirror and I realized I had one of two choices, change the list or change myself.

But the real focus should be on people who are buying today because the base is so big it will take a long time for any change materialize on an overall basis.