American Quotes

The world of scholarship is much more measured in its appreciation and also its criticism than the world of popular literature.

The plain truth is that the period I study is the 16th century, and they were absolutely obsessed with witches and spiritual beings.

Once upon a time, about 10 years ago, I thought maybe I could write a mystery series about a midwife in Elizabethan England. I had an elaborately convoluted title and an elaborately convoluted plotline, and at that point I got stupendously bored.

My niece was very much caught up in the vampire craze for young adults, and she thought having a vampire boyfriend would be a cool thing. What do you do on a first date? The more I thought about it, the more fun I had imagining what you'd serve a vampire for dinner.

Magic provides a way of still having room for possibilities, an unlimited sense of what the world offers. Magic is always there when science is found wanting.

I'm a storyteller, and I have really good material to work with: I've been studying magic and the occult since about 1983.

I'm a professional non-fiction reader, that's what I do. But in my 20s we had our own vampire and witch moment, courtesy of Anne Rice, whose books I read and loved.

I'd studied 16th century science and magic. I thought it was strange that people were interested in the same kinds of things my research was about. The more I thought about it, the more intriguing it became and pretty soon I was writing a novel about a reluctant witch and a 1500-year-old vampire.

I teach 18- to 21-year-olds - the 'Harry Potter' generation. They grew up as voracious readers, reading books in this exploding genre. But at some point, I would love for them to give Umberto Eco or A.S. Byatt a try. I hope 'A Discovery of Witches' will serve as a kind of stepping-stone.

I really love helping students and helping them empathize with people who lived a really long time ago. That's one of the highlights of working in fiction.

I realised that today we are very much interested in reading about subjects that would have also interested people in the 1500s: ghosts, demons and things that go bump in the night.

I couldn't resist hiding some historical details and a few clues relevant to the plot and characters of 'A Discovery of Witches' throughout the pages of the novel.

For me, a $20 wine that drinks like a $40 wine in terms of complexity and interest is a value, while a $5 wine that is not very good is not a value at all in my opinion.

Films are wonderful but they do fix an identity. I can't read 'Pride and Prejudice' anymore, for instance, without imaging Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy.

Cheap wine is defined by its price, and it depends on personal spending limits. So for me, any wine under $10 is cheap.

As a historian, I love every little detail, but whole long passages about wood paneling and journeys on horseback and every stop at every inn had to go out the window. I decided the history in the books should be like spice in a soup - a little went a long way. Like cilantro.

A lot of our assumptions of the world are fairly cynical, fairly negative, and assume the worst. What our reading tastes show - in this rush to fantasy, romance, whatever - is that we actually still want to believe in a world of possibility, in a world of mystery.

While President Bush's tax give-aways for the rich are pushing us further into debt, he compensates by increasing the out-of-pocket costs to our veterans.

The President must stop gambling with taxpayers' money and get the country back on the path of fiscal sanity.

The Gulf War was like teenage sex. We got in too soon and out too soon.

Stem cell research holds enormous promise for easing human suffering, and federal support is critical to its success.

Let's face it, in America today we don't have a health care system, we have a sick care system.

America's health care system is in crisis precisely because we systematically neglect wellness and prevention.

When I die there is nobody to take my place.

There are some images that I will only use once, and not use again because they don't seem to really hit the nail right on the head, but there are some which are so strong they have to be reduced; sometimes just reusing them makes them stronger.

The dripping... well, if it happens, it happens; it does not take anything from the work. The dripping just proves that you were not trying to control the work, but the work was developing by itself and if it drips, it's a natural part in the evolution of the work.

Shapes that contain no inner components of positive/negative relationships will function better with other shapes of the same nature.

See, when I paint, it is an experience that, at its best, is transcending reality.

People were more interested in the phenomena than the art itself. This, combined with the growing interest in collecting art as an investment and the resultant boom in the art market, made it a difficult time for a young artist to remain sincere without becoming cynical.

My contribution to the world is my ability to draw. I will draw as much as I can for as many people as I can for as long as I can.