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" The way to my heart is through Belgian milk chocolate. "

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" Every parent has those moments where they look at their child and think, 'There's a demon in those eyes and no one can see it but me!' "

" I've been writing full-time since I was 23. "

" You're meant to have an unhappy childhood to be a writer, but there's a lot to be said for a very happy one that just lets you get on with it. "

" I hate desks; they make me feel like a child doing homework. "

" I think it would be a shame for any writer to let their publishers in any way corral them into a single genre. "

" I would say I have sort of a natural gift for character, and following one person's point of view at a time, and dialogue, but I'm not naturally good at strong plot. "

" It's painful to consider anything but writing. "

" You know the way there are two kinds of actors - the De Niro kind who's always De Niro, and then somebody like Daniel Day-Lewis, who transforms himself eerily? Well, I aim to be the Daniel Day-Lewis kind of writer. I don't have a house style. "

" I am clumsy, a late and nervous driver, and despise all sports except a little gentle dancing or yoga. "

" I have never been depressed or thrown a plate, which I attribute to the cathartic effects of writing books about people whose lives are more grueling than mine. "

" A memoir is always the most authentic telling of a situation, but a novel gets to different places. "

" Any parent knows how to be the ideal parent. "

" Writers should be applauded for their ability to make things up. "

" I remember a period where my publisher said to me, 'Look, your historical work is selling much better than your contemporary work, so please give us more historicals.' "

" I'm constantly saying, 'I read a fascinating article in 'The New Yorker'... ' I say it so often that sometimes I think I have nothing interesting to say myself, I merely regurgitate 'The New Yorker.' "

" I'm finding that success is way more time-consuming than failure ever was. "

" I'm not at all snobby about book prizes and how they pollute the world of literature. Just like with the Olympics, a little bit of competition gets people truly engrossed in the business of literature. "

" One thing I like about historical fiction is that I'm not constantly focusing on me, or people like me; you're obliged to concentrate on lives that are completely other than your own. "

" Ah yes, the paradox of publicity is that even as we do it, we know it's killing off the chance of another reader happening across our book in the ideal state of innocence. "

" Identity politics are wearisome; you don't want to go on speaking for any one group as a writer. "

" I come out of an academic background, and I'm aware that what I'm doing is simultaneously research and fiction. I want to meet both those obligations. "

" I've always been religiously inclined, but it doesn't come up in most of my books. "

" Some writers can produce marvelous plots without planning it out, but I can't. In particular I need to know the structure of a novel: what's going to happen in each chapter and each scene. "

" I'm named after Jane Austen's Emma, and I've always been able to relate to her. She's strong, confident but quite tactless. "

" You cannot predict literary success; the only way you can possibly aim for it is to do your thing and do it well. "

" You know, plenty of people headed off to Canada or America on the basis of government information, propaganda campaigns. Often you'd go off with a brochure in hand and you'd turn up and it wouldn't be like that at all. "

" I'm a huge planner, more and more so as the years go by. "

" I'm really not one of these procrastinators who cleans the house in order to put off writing, but life gets in the way. "

" For all that being a parent is normal statistically, it's not normal psychologically. It produces some of the most extreme emotions you'll ever have. "

" Kids delight in 'magical thinking', whether in the form of the Tooth Fairy or the saints: whether you see these as comforting lies or eternal verities, they are part of how we help kids make sense of the world. "