“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.”

“Our archives are treasure troves - a testament to many lives lived and the complexity of the way we move forward. They contain clues to the real concerns of day-to-day life that bring the past alive.”

“Archive material is vital to the writer of historical fiction.”

“Let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them b...”

“We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.”

“We, the Hawaiian people, who are born from the union of Papahanaumoku and Wakea, earth mother and sky father, and who have lived in these islands for over 100 generations, will always have the mora...”

“Look for a miracle in every encounter.”

“And Meredith and Bonnie, who's going to bend some spoons for us next. I'm going to throw you down a rope that is, unless Bonnie can levitate you out.”

“What an odd thing a diary is: the things you omit are more important than those you put in.”

“Billy Pilgrim had a theory about diaries.Women were more likely than men to think that their lives had sufficient meaning to require recording on a daily basis. It was not for the most part a God-i...”