You know, it's a truism that writers for children must still be children themselves, deep down, must still feel childish feelings, and a child's surprise at the world.

I was no good at being a child.

What I need to write well is a combination of heat, light and solitude.

It is good for a man to invite his ghosts into his warm interior, out of the wild night, into the firelight, out of the howling dark.

I hated being a novelist when I was 20 - I had nothing to write about.

In England, everyone believes if you think, then you don't feel. But all my novels are about joining together thinking and feeling.

I think there are a lot more important things than art in the world. But not to me.