At one point, some years ago, a nice gentleman had it in mind to do 'Outlander' the musical. His idea was to start with a CD of what you call a song cycle, with a dozen high points of the projected show. It turned out very well, though we had to stop doing it when the TV show came along.

Whenever you're dealing with something that's difficult to describe, that you can't get across to someone in a sound bite, it sounds like the normal default is to pick what's easiest, and in the case of fiction written by women, fiction involving women, fiction involving any sort of relationship, the word that comes to mind is 'romance.'

I've never seen anyone deal in a literary way with what it takes to stay married for more than 50 years, and that seemed like a worthy goal.

I understand the visual media very well, as I used to write comic books for Walt Disney, and I've written a graphic novel. How you carry a story in pictures is different than how you do it in text.

Normally, it takes me about three years to write one of the big books. It is usually four years between releases because of the huge amount of travel and PR and just nuisance going on around them. I have a lot of pressure from publishers and agents.

I don't work in a straight line. I don't write with an outline. I write where I can see things happen, and then things get glued together.

Cultural concepts are one of the most fascinating things about historical fiction. There's always a temptation, I think, among some historical writers to shade things toward the modern point of view. You know, they won't show someone doing something that would have been perfectly normal for the time but that is considered reprehensible today.

I've had no fewer than three young women on separate occasions come up to me at book signings and unzip their pants, turn around, and drop them to show me that they had 'Bonnie lassie' tattooed across their rumpuses!

In a great many stories that deal with time travel, there's usually somebody who knows how time travel works. They lay out the rules.

Back in the day, years ago, in 1988, the only TV I watched was 'Doctor Who' because I had children and two full-time jobs, and 'Doctor Who' was the exact length of time it took to do my nails, so I would watch 'Doctor Who' once a week!

If you call it a romance, it will never be reviewed by the 'New York Times' or any other respectable literary venue. And that's okay. I can live with that.

When' Voyager', the third book of the series, hit the 'New York Times' bestseller list, they very honorably redesigned the covers and started calling them fiction.

I have never seen a script that hasn't gone through at least eight different iterations before they even begin filming, and frequently what is filmed is not what's in the script, because things change on the ground. An actor can't say a particular line. An actor will have a brainstorm and ad lib something utterly brilliant.

I understand the visual media very well, as I used to write comic books for Walt Disney, and I've written a graphic novel.

I don't plan the books ahead of time. It's not like Harry Potter. I don't work in a straight line. I don't write with an outline.

I write where I can see things happen, and then things get glued together. I do have the final scene, but that really is an epilogue. It's not part of the plot.

How you carry a story in pictures is different than how you do it in text.

Cultural concepts are one of the most fascinating things about historical fiction.

The thought that you ought not to drink while pregnant came much, much later. In fact, I had my first child in 1982, and I was still told by nurses and so forth, 'Have a glass of wine with dinner. It'll help you relax.'

I read Tolkien when I was 11. I read 'The Hobbit' and the trilogy on a road trip with my family. I identified with the nonhumans in those books, and it never occurred to me why that was.

You see one scene shot 25 times in one day, which is totally fascinating, but while you're watching it, you're remembering, 'This is what I was thinking when I was writing that part of the book,' and so it brings it all back very gradually as you're working.

Partly because of the way I write - I don't work with an outline or in a straight line. I work where I can see things happening, and so I get lots and lots of little bits to start with, and I'm doing the research at the same time.

I grew up in Flagstaff, and I still own my old family house up there, so I go up there a couple of times a month just to sit for a day or two and work without any kind of interruption, and I usually take a dinner break, and I'll watch two hours of DVD.

At one point, some years ago, a nice gentleman had it in mind to do 'Outlander The Musical.'

I took to saying, 'Look, tell you what: Pick it up; open it anywhere. Read three pages. If you can put it down again, I'll pay you a dollar. So I never lost any money on that bet, but I sold a lot of books.

My mother taught me to read in part by reading me Walt Disney comics, and I never stopped.

My husband asked me once why I read so many mysteries, and part of it is just intellectual, part of it is the joy of any good book, but part of it is the moral stakes there.

I hated 'The Lovely Bones'. I thought her vision of Heaven was amazingly uninspired and very depressing. The book was just tedious.

We started watching 'Doctor Who' as a family because our first daughter was a cranky baby, and she would get up during the night - and it was her dad's job to stay up because I worked at night.

Orkney has the kind of landscape that sort of lends itself to a relationship with the people. I think that relationship is intensified because of its remoteness and the long periods of time when there was no interaction with other cultures.

If you're going to write time travel stories, you have to sort of figure out how does time travel work in this particular universe that I'm dealing with.

There are always people screeching and upset that I did this or didn't do that. Basically, they're upset that I didn't rewrite an earlier book they particularly liked.

If nobody needs me - and usually, these days, they don't - I'll fall asleep until around midnight. Then I go upstairs and work until 4 A.M., and that's when I go back to bed for good. It suits me.

My husband gets up at around 5.30 A.M., so I'll tuck him in around 9.30 P.M. or 10 P.M., and then I'll go and lie down on the couch with a book and my two dachshunds.

Eight was about the age I was when I realized that people actually produced books, they didn't just spring out of the library shelves.

I discovered that, given the indescribable nature of what I write, the only way to sell it is to give people free samples.

If you want to know anything about me, read my books - it's all there.

Some time later, long after 'Voyager' was published, I came across the Dunbonnet in another reference, and it gave an expanded version, and it told me the Dunbonnet's name - which was James Fraser.

I've walked on a lot of battlefields. Most of them are not haunted.

If you donate to a charity and save a few kids, 20 years down the line, there will be more people who exist because of you. In other words, you should consider your actions fully.

I was 35, had always wanted to write novels, and thought that I had better do it while I was young enough.

I thought at first that I might write mysteries, but then I said, 'Mysteries have plots, and I'm not sure I can do that yet.'

The only thing I knew about novels from a technical point of view was that they should have conflict.

I do recall loving 'All Quiet on the Western Front,' and I know I read it in a schoolroom, but I think I was in the sixth grade at the time, so it probably wasn't assigned reading.

I don't think I ever consciously separated 'school' books from any others; I just read anything that came across my path.

I've read a lot of classic literature from assorted cultures, and always glad to read more when one comes across my path - but why be embarrassed by the fact that flesh and blood has limits? Nobody's read everything.

Oh, 'Pandaemonium', by Chris Brookmyre! Just fabulous - such a layered, beautifully structured, engaging, intelligent book. I love all Chris's stuff, but this was remarkable.

I cannot remember not being able to read.

I think it's extremely important that children are exposed to reading.

My mom would keep all kinds of materials in her classroom for children for reading. She kept comic books, newspapers, sports magazines, and books of all kinds.