Deborah Harkness

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

What if 16th century people were right, and the supernatural and natural coexisted? How would that play out? ”

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. ”

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. ”

After 20 years of writing academic prose and lectures, it seems very familiar and straightforward to me. Writing a novel for the first time, I was reminded of just how difficult it is to figure out how to get this stuff done when you don't really know what you're doing. ”

I re-read the books I assign to my students. Each time I do, I learn something new. ”

My most fertile reading time is when I have just finished a project and haven't started another. I binge-read and surf around bookstores. ”

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. ”

There is a lot of talk in the academy about the death of the humanities. Based on my readers' response and their interest in history and literature and art, the death of the humanities has been grossly overstated. ”

People think about history as all grand gestures or significant moments, but the most valuable lesson we can learn is the enduring legacy of the small, meaningful things in life. ”