Tell the story, gather the events, repeat them. Pattern is a matter of upkeep. Otherwise the weave relaxes back to threads picked up by birds to make their nests. Repeat, or the story will fall and all the king's horses and all the king's men. . . . Repeat, and cradle the pieces carefully, or events will scatter like marbles on a wooden floor.

The thief you must fear the most is not the one who steals mere things.

The world should not be organized to require heroines, and when one is required but fails to appear, we should not judge.

In terms of the secrets that imbue and underlie Fall on Your Knees, they were as much of a mystery to me as I was creating the story as they are to the readers.

Tell the story, gather the events, repeat them. Pattern is a matter of upkeep. Otherwise the weave relaxes back to threads picked up by birds to make their nests. Repeat, or the story will fall and all the king's horses and all the king's men. . . . Repeat, and cradle the pieces carefully, or events will scatter like marbles on a wooden floor.

Piece by piece living is hard to do. It may even feel like the hardest thing. But it has this going for it: you never need to know what it is you're carrying on your shoulders.

Afterwards, in bed with a book, the spell of television feels remote compared to the journey into the page. To be in a book. To slip into the crease where two pages meet, to live in the place where your eyes alight upon the words to ignite a world of smoke and peril, colour and serene delight. That is a journey no one can end with the change of a channel. Enduring magic.