“Bulgarians eat tarator every single day in summer. They think of it as salad although we'd call it a soup. You can make it as thick or thin as you like depending on how much water you add. It's very practical in summer because yogurt cools the body faster than water, but the water hydrates you.”

“Every writer hopes his or her book will be its own thing.”

“For me, Dracula has always been associated with travel and beautiful historical places.”

“I keep telling myself I should try very hard to write a novel of about 210 pages... I don't seem to be capable of it, but I keep hoping it will happen.”

“I love to cook and I've cooked a lot of Bulgarian food over the years.”

“I think it's important to recognise that 'The Da Vinci Code' opened up a vast new audience for a general readership interested in historical detective stories and research into history.”

“I wasn't brought up to be dazzled by money or fame.”

“My publishers are wonderful because they have let me write what I wanted to. They're wise enough to know that, with any author who's not simply writing formulas - who's trying to create something new - pressuring them to do something for market purposes almost always backfires. I can't imagine working under those circumstances, actually.”

“No book that is written for an external purpose is going to be a passionately felt book for the writer or the reader. I don't see the point in doing that.”

“Sometimes people damage paintings or sculpture because they love it. They throw their arms around a statue in a fit of hysterical passion and it falls over.”