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I always say that bad women are fewer than men, but when you get one, they're fascinating because they're so rotten.

When I started researching history in the 1960s, a lot of women about whom I've subsequently written were actually footnotes to history. There was a perception that women weren't important. And it's true. Women were seen historically as far inferior to men.

I think there has been a great deal of valuable revisionism in women's history.

The women I gravitate to are the ones who defy convention and reinvent themselves - hence, they reinvent the world around them.

Women's stories have been neglected for so long - unless they were queens. Exploring the history of women is a way of redressing that imbalance.

Women have been interesting forever.

I don't know why women aren't allowed to have the same sort of breadth and scope and flaws of men.

But there were women in the world, and from them each of our heroes had taken to himself a wife. The good ladies were no strangers to the prowess of their husbands. and, strange as it may seem, they presumed a little upon it.

Women are the harshest critics of other women.

If nothing else, I want women to understand that they are powerful. If you look back at history, in almost every big moment, in every leap forward, you find ordinary women at the core. We have more ability to make changes in the world than we can imagine if we have the courage to try.