I wanted to wear the mantle and the pearls. I wanted to know the man who painted her like that.

The sign of a masterpiece: A painting when there's a lack of resolution.

Jane Austen easily used half a page describing someone else's eyes she would not appreciate summarizing her reading tastes in ten titles.

Younger women tend to be busier, wearing more layers and more make-up. I don't know if it's because older women are more confident, or just that we don't care any more. But that pared-down approach is the same with the sentences I write I take out adjectives and adverbs and keep the description to a minimum.

Over his shoulder I saw a star fall. It was me.

It's those little daily incidents of life that are dramatic, and if you put a frame around it , suddenly they become much bigger and much more important than you ever imagined.

It's a rare book that wins the battle against drooping eyelids.

I read a lot of fantasy. I adored 'Anne of Green Gables'. But my favourite books as a child were probably Laura Ingalls Wilder's 'Little House' series, about a pioneer family in the mid-19th-century American west. I often thought of them as I was writing 'The Last Runaway'.

Normally book ideas come to me in a moment.

We say very little, for we do not need to. We are silent together, each in her own world, knowing the other is just at her back.

You know I don’t listen to market gossip,” she began, “but it is hard not to hear it when my daughter’s name is mentioned.

I find that when I come out of the library I'm in what I call the library bliss of being totally taken away from the distractions of life.

Say something worth the words.

I have spent my life waiting for something to happen,’ she said. ‘And I have come to understand that nothing will. Or it already has, and I blinked during that moment and it's gone. I don't know which is worse — to have missed it or to know there is nothing to miss.’ Falling Angels

As I get older, I use less jewelry - necklace or earrings each morning, not both my clothes are getting more basic - fewer colours and simpler cuts and my make-up is stripped back to basics.

Don't write about what you know - write about what you're interested in. Don't write about yourself - you aren't as interesting as you think.