Paula McLain Quotes

I love writers all across the board, but one who influenced me very directly at the beginning was Mary Renault.

I love the virtuosity and imaginative chutzpah of 'Da Vinci's Demons,' and not just because my boyfriend is in it!

Many a man owes his success to his first wife and his second wife to his success.

The truth is that the writers who most influenced me weren't people categorized as crime writers. I'd say I learned more from John O'Hara, who isn't much read today but whose short stories I really admired, and Hemingway, who I think has lasted pretty good.

It is really rare to find someone you really, really love and that you want to spend your life with and all that stuff that goes along with being married. I am one of those lucky people. And I think she feels that way too. So the romantic stuff is easy because you want them to be happy.

They've never written a love story for me since I've been on the show and I think there's just more weight to it when two people love each other.

I have never started a novel - I mean except the first, when I was starting a novel just to start a novel - I've never written one without rereading Victory. It opens up the possibilities of a novel. It makes it seem worth doing.

I was in Siena and decided I wanted to write a story set there. Then I discovered that the original story of Romeo and Juliet was set in Siena. It occurred to me that this was too much of a gift - I had to do it. That's how I ended up writing a parallel story to Romeo and Juliet.

I just felt that you can't have a character fall in love so madly as they did in the last movie and not finish it off, understand it, get some closure. That's why the movie is called 'Quantum of Solace' - that's exactly what he's looking for.

The first movie was mostly about George and Julia. This one is mostly about me and Catherine and our love story and our whole history. So it's a very different movie.

I love to have real people of history interact with my fictional characters. History gives me the plot. I research the period meticulously, and then I blend in a romantic and sensual love story to give it balance. The heavier the history, the more romantic the couple must be.

There's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows anything about.

I've always loved writing emotionally rich, character-driven novels that explore the way people fall in love and deal with life's triumphs and tragedies. I enjoy writing the contemporary and historical books equally, though perhaps 'enjoy' is the wrong word.

I've never had a dislike for men. I've been badly treated by some. But I've been loved greatly by some. I married a lot of them.

This thing called chemistry, which I can't define and wouldn't know how to, either works or it doesn't. Sometimes a love story can involve very talented actors, but we are not invested emotionally in whether they end up together.

I love that topic, the whole relationship thing, and I think that's why I love all this stuff, the Jane Austen stuff.

If you lift the romantic element out of my plots, you still have fully formed mysteries. In the same fashion, if you pull the mystery out of a historical romance, you are left with a perfectly satisfying story.

I think it's fascinating that people take an interest in a middle-aged married couple and what happens behind our closed front door.

When you get to play a character that's in love, it's cool. Once you have love as a motivator in a story, your character is free to do anything.

I was really interested in how marriages work, how you can, you know, be in love with somebody and spend many years with your lives intertwined, but in the end another soul can be fundamentally unknowable. And I think that the stress of war, when one party goes away and the other has to deal at home, is a really testing time in a lot of marriages.

Married men make the best husbands.

I have a family. I'm married. I'm very, very happy. I wanted to make a movie for my wife and a movie that speaks to what it is to be in a long term, very, very committed relationship because at the heart that's really what it is.

She sat down at the table and spent a good hour talking about her husband. She told Judith how they'd met, how he relentlessly pursued her, and finished by mentioning just a hundred or two of his special qualities. The only thing the man wasn't capable of was walking on water… yet. Judith made that comment when her friend paused for breath.

I thought it was interesting when [Bill Clinton] said, I married my best friend, because people are always asking, what is the nature of their marriage.

I think we explored the further reaches of for better or for worse than some other married couples.