“Life was life. It happened. You never knew what was going to come at you. Or how you could defend yourself.”

Successful women don’t sleep until noon.

Edwina always enjoyed a morning ride. Some mornings she rode the horse, and some mornings she rode the groom.

I work eight hours a day, but I’m not writing all that time. I’m thinking, editing, looking something up. Thinking is what I do a lot of.

We are each the authors of our own lives, Emma. We live in what we have created. There is no way to shift the blame and no one else to accept the accolades.

This parting cannot be for long; for those who love as we do cannot be parted. We shall always be united in thought, and thought is a great magnet. I have often spoken to thee of reason, now i speak to thee of faith

What is done can never be undone.

Bookstores see a book by a woman and they put it in the romance section.

Elizabeth studied the blurry tabloid photo, which showed her cousin Mary Stuart leaving a Paris disco at dawn, drunkenly clinging to the arm of a French tennis pro. The message was very clear. Put passion first and you end up neither loved nor respected.

My dear girl, you must cultivate a taste for the finer things. Civilized pleasures give meaning to life.

Priceless things matter not for their value, but because they offer us an enduring reminder of stability and permanence.

Even the most powerful woman needs a place to unwind.

When you are a strong woman, you will attract trouble. When a man feels threatened, there is always trouble.

The past was always there, lived inside of you, and it helped to make you who you were. But it had to be placed in perspective. The past could not dominate the future.

In my opinion, moderation is a vastly overrated virtue, particularly when applied to work

I will never stop writing. People often ask when I will retire, but I say it’s none of their business. Writing defines who I am. I love the feeling of holding a finished book in my hands, and then I can’t wait to start the great adventure of writing the next one.

Elizabeth lay face-down on the massage table, and allowed Marco to relieve the stress of the business day with firm and knowing fingers. Success, she decided, was often a matter of knowing when to relax.

My worst expectations never happened.

Success happened little by little for me. I tasted the flavor of fame in small doses: I started at 10 years old when I won a music contest; I was performing at birthday parties, company meetings.

Perhaps one cannot, what is more one must not, understand what happened, because to understand [the Holocaust] is almost to justify.

I don’t care too much what happened in the past.

You say, “Something important really happened here. I really had hold of something I was visited by the muse.” And that’s enough to make you continue the months and years to finish the whole book.

In this ordinary life without Ren, I think my life with him was like a dream. Especially on a snowy night like this. On a night as cold as this. Someone keep this guy warm for me, please.

Many things happened in my life, and I thought that they changed me. But in the end, nothing has changed since I was seventeen.

I think within a year or so, perhaps, if 9/11 had not happened, in Afghanistan would have been a very broad-based general uprising against the Taliban.