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

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.

The kids can see that there are more parts to me than just being their mom; I wear a couple of different hats and have other roles to play.

My mother is my hero.

For me, the worst part of playing golf, by far, has always been hitting the ball.

Postwar U.S. was the world's leader in science and technology. The investment in science research was staggering.

I change the workout every month, so you never adapt and never plateau.

Nonsense is that which does not fit into the prearranged patterns which we have superimposed on reality. Nonsense is nonsense only when we have not yet found that point of view from which it makes sense.

The reality is that I'm an actor from the Midwest and I was 40 movies into it before I started 'Entourage'.

America's strength is not our diversity; our strength is our ability to unite people of different backgrounds around common principles. A common language is necessary to reach that goal.

Basically, the person in the White House should be principled, should have a philosophy about food that relates directly to organic agriculture. I will continue to push for that.

I've never necessarily chosen to be a bachelor. I've had girlfriends throughout the last 20 or 30 years. It's just that there were times when I met people that fascinated me and times I didn't.

Swimming Pool was a very important moment for me because the character was written for me.

What I would have liked to do on that show was play a secretary of state who has huge personal business interests throughout the world. That, to me, seems to be more in synch with reality.

I don't really want to get married. I've got my career, my friends - my life is very, very full. It's nice to go out to dinner with a man and have fun, but I wouldn't rush into anything because I don't think it's right to bring another man into the house with my four children.

Life is like a ferris wheel. One minute youre on top the next youre at the bottom. Just stay in your seat enjoy the ride and hang on until you reach the top again.

No one in their right mind can say to me with a straight face that the Patriot Act has not aggregated the Fourth Amendment.

There are countless fantastic actors out there who are being denied the opportunity to play Broadway because they're not a name, and I think that's kind of wrong.

A crowd is not merely impulsive and mobile. Like a savage, it is not prepared to admit that anything can come between its desire and the realisation of its desire.

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?-Jean-Jacques Rousseau

If Rob Ford decided he wanted to run for the Liberal Party in 2015, we'd say, 'No, sorry, the way you approach things, the way you govern, the way you behave is not suitable to the kind of Liberal team we want to build.'