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" I am perfectly capable of writing things about myself that one doesn't discuss in polite company, but I was raised by people who said you don't discuss politics, you don't discuss religion, and you certainly don't discuss people's sex lives. "

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" I'll never have so compelling a figure within my embrace as Joan of Arc; there will never be a book whose last chapter is so very hard to get right. "

Kathryn Harrison

Right

Never

Chapter

" I was raised by maternal grandparents who were born in 1890 and 1899, respectively. They were British subjects; George V was the cousin of the tsar. The Romanovs were very real in their household. "

" Rasputin's daughter understands the revolution. She would have been an outsider, a spectator in the royal family and to the revolution. "

" We know the seductive alchemy of art. To transform private anguish into a narrative of truth, if not beauty; to make sense where there was none; to bring order out of chaos - these are the promises art makes. "

" It's hard for me not to have a great deal of compassion for the last Romanov family because, really, I don't know if a politically savvy ruler would have been able to make the situation turn out much differently. "

" Like all holy figures whose earthly existence separates them from the broad mass of humanity, a saint is a story, and Joan of Arc's is like no other. "

Kathryn Harrison

Other

Story

" Looking at the Obamas, they have a lot to manage with their children and having Michelle go out and have everybody comment on what she was wearing, what it means. I think you have to create a pretty large private world to live in. "

" I remember seeing my father only twice as a child for brief visits. As I grew up, I invented a father who was larger than life - stronger, smarter, more handsome, and even holier than other men. "

" How many artists subscribe to the notion that creative success depends on input from the fickle muse or her modern avatar, mental illness? Probably very few. "

" Whether writing fiction or nonfiction, I've never had the sense I was 'making up' a character. It feels more like watching people reveal themselves, ever more deeply, more intimately. "

Kathryn Harrison

Never

People

" The power of 'Madame Bovary' stems from Flaubert's determination to render each object of his scrutiny exactly as it looks, or sounds or smells or feels or tastes. "

" I don't care what people think about me. I care what people think about my work. As a young woman, I was so eager to please that I served others' happiness and even their values before my own. "

" Having grown up so familiar with creating a pleasing facade, I now end up compelled to reveal things inside and say, 'Okay, now you really see me. Do you still love me?' And then it's never enough; it always has to be total self-revelation. "

Kathryn Harrison

Love

You

" I have at last admitted that not only was I angry with my mother, but, in fact, I wanted to destroy her as a child. And I was so concerned to be a woman who was different from my mother that I had this vast architecture of rules. "

" For years, the place I really lived - the world I watched, the one I thought and wrote about - was 15th-century France. "

" I think in terms of the parents that I had, I sort of drew a bad hand, or bad karma; who knows? And I did have a family that was complicated, with some quite eccentric members. So there was a lot of grist there. "

" A lot of writers dwell on their relationships with their mothers, but only a few are worth reading. "

" I love any book that makes my family seem almost normal. "

" The least likely of military leaders, Joan of Arc changed the course of the Hundred Years' War and of history. "

" I wrote 'The Kiss' 12 hours a day for six months. "

" It is my conviction that secrets are more costly in the long run than honesty. "

Kathryn Harrison

Than

Secrets

" I'm not an investigative journalist; I don't track crime or police blotters. "

" One of the things I find exciting about Joan of Arc is how clearly the story of her life reveals the creation of myth, a process in which every one of us is involved - every one of us who tells stories and all those who listen, each informing the other. "

" I was the good girl who never needed disciplining, who made straight A's. I applied and was accepted to Stanford University. "

" 'Madame Bovary' advanced slowly, as slowly as it would have to have, given an author who held himself accountable to each word, that it be the right word, of which there could be only one. "

" Because the kind of nonfiction I write has a plot, the events and transactions that make up a life, nonfiction offers me a break from plotting. "

Kathryn Harrison

Life

Kind

" When I was eleven, my mother gave me Robert K. Massie's 'Nicholas and Alexandra.' It was the first 'grownup' book I read, and I loved it. "

" Writing is how I stay sane. It's completely necessary. "

" How much of a book review is about the reviewer? Sometimes it's mostly about the reviewer! "

" Lives that are so conspicuous have a claustrophobic feeling. Once you're in charge of running a country, you're under scrutiny all the time. That's a trap. "