Geraldine Brooks

"You can't write about the past and ignore religion. It was such a fundamental, mind-shaping, driving force for pre-modern societies. I'm very interested in what religion does to us - its capacity to create love and empathy or hatred and violence."

"No one sits, as you do, so close to a king, who does not begin to grasp how the levers of power work, and the cost of the oil that must grease them."