“While I'm frustrated at the amount I'm expected to take on in the present, the 1950s woman was frustrated by being excluded - not being allowed to take things on at all.”

“Today women have the rights and equality our Victorian sisters could only dream of, and with those privileges comes the responsibility of standing up and being counted.”

“I'm not sure how much easier it is for a mother to balance her life now - have we simply swapped one set of restrictions for another?”

“I was asked the other day in which era I would choose to live. As a historical novelist, it comes up sometimes. As a woman I'd have to say I'd like to live in the future - I want to see where these...”

“In the 1950s at least less was expected of women. Now we're supposed to build a career, build a home, be the supermum that every child deserves, the perfect wife, meet the demands of elderly parent...”

“Looking at my life through the lens of history has made me increasingly grateful to standout women who pushed those boundaries to make the changes from which I have benefited.”

“Be the winner in your life!”

“One evening, after a particularly terrible row, the prince smashed his princess over the head with an old wooden clock and she tumbled to the floor, dead.”

“It draws you in and you feel involved as if you're watching. - Barbara Bailey”

“Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misint...”

“A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.”

“As a young man just beginning to publish some short fiction in the t&a magazines, I was fairly optimistic about my chances of getting published; I knew that I had some game, as the basketball playe...”