Maybe he's been in Africa so long he has forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it is called Monotony.

I'm never going to tell the reader what to believe; I'm going to examine these characters that believe different ways, and examine their motives.

I love developing children as characters. Children rarely have important roles in literary fiction - they are usually defined as cute or precious, or they create a plot by being kidnapped or dying.

I did it to win love, and to prove myself capable. Not to move mountains. In my opinions, mountains don't move. They only look changed when you look down on them from great height.

The daily work - that goes on, it adds up.

I know I'm a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.

Children model the behavior of adults, on whatever scale is available to them. Ours are growing up in a nation whose most important, influential men - from presidents to the coolest film characters - solve problems by killing people. ... We have taught our children in a thousand ways, sometimes with flag-waving and sometimes with a laugh track, that the bad guy deserves to die.