I'm starting to think my narrators' sentences are getting too big for them, and they are getting to sound a bit samey and, more disturbingly, a bit too much like me.

A drinker does not exist. Whatever they say, it is just the drink talking.

And, in fact, this is the tale that I would love to write: history is such a romantic place, with its jarveys and urchins and side-buttoned boots. If it would just stay still, I think, and settle down. If it would just stop sliding around in my head.

Naming is nice. It took me days before I was able to speak a name for my first child (what if people did not like it?), and I suspect we gave her a secret, second name as well, to keep her safe.

I do not believe in evil- I believe that we are human and fallible, that we things and spoil them in an ordinary way.

One of the reasons I write is I like being surprised

I think you know everything at eight. But is is hidden from you, sealed up, in a way you have to cut yourself open to find.