But that initial, comet-blazing-across-the-sky, Big Idea is only the beginning. Each book is composed of a mosaic of thousands of little ideas, ideas that invariably come to me at two in the morning when my alarm is set for seven.
Old books exert a strange fascination for me — their smell, their feel, their history; wondering who might have owned them, how they lived, what they felt.
Patience is only a virtue when there is something worth waiting for.
If a man took a lover it would be accounted commonplace. Why shouldn’t you? Your virtue lies in your mind, not in what lies between your legs.
Such kindness wasn’t a gift but a goad, scraping against one’s skin like a yoke of thorns. She would have preferred him stiff, defensive, even offensive.
This was what the poets couldn’t put in their poetry, she thought dumbly, the rush of desire so fierce and pure it made one shake, all on the force of a word.
Tell them I have the headache–no, the plague! I need something nice and contagious.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that one only comes up with clever, cutting remarks long after the other party is happily slumbering away.
LIPID (Last Idiot Person I Dated) syndrome: a largely undiagnosed but pervasive disease that afflicts single women.
It would be, like all of Pammy’s parties, hot and crowded and filled with impossibly glamorous people with hip bones so sharp they could qualify as concealed weapons.
No sin is original, no matter what the bright young things may hope. We’re all merely playing to a theme.
It’s the exile’s dilemma. The home they yearn for is never the home to which they return. If they return.
Amy wondered if Bonaparte could declare war on Miss Gwen alone without breaking his peace with England
He admired her for throwing off her aristocratic shackles — his terms, that — and making her own way in the world.He didn’t realize that the truth was so much more complex, so much less impressive. She had less thrown than been thrown.
Turning to Turnip, Miss Dempsey said, ‘Do you think?’. ‘As little as I can,’ Turnip replied honestly.
Word of advice, sister mine. If you want to keep your papers private, don’t write ‘Private’ on the cover. It set the mater right off. It was all I could do to stop her sniffing around like some great sniffing thing.
My own inclination is to skew towards humor. They say that some people view life as a comedy, others as a tragedy. Me? Comedy all the way.
I never sat down and said, ‘I’m going to write historical fiction with strong romantic elements.’ It was just the way the stories went.
Say what you will about Queen Eleanor, she was a savvy, quick-witted woman who made her mark on history. And as the founder of the Courts of Love, what better patron monarch could there be for a romantic novelist?