There's such a gulf between yourself and who you were then, but people speak to that other person and it answers; it's like having a stranger as a house guest in your skin.

Why is it that only girls stand on the sides of their feet? As if they're afraid to plant themselves?

You never knew which split second might be the zigzag bolt dividing all that went before from the everything that comes next.

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

Because I write fiction that is based in the real world, it's going to lead people into some of the modern dilemmas and concerns and even catastrophes that they will think about in a new way.

You always need that spark of imagination. Sometimes I'm midway through a book before it happens. However, I don't wait for the muse to descend, I sit down every day and I work when I'm not delivering lambs on the farm.

What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.