The violence for me is never meant to be entertaining. It's meant to hurt the characters and I'm trying to show the impact it is having on the people involved with it. If there is cathartic violence at the end, then it costs the protagonist something. It's not just a blaze-of-glory moment.

I might be at a point where I don't want to go with a genre convention but I have to produce some pages. It's hard work. And it requires you learn certain skills.

Once we understand how they think, we can predict their behaviour. And once we predict it well, we can manipulate it. That is diplomacy.

Writing is an art but also a craft, which means it's a job. I don't teach. This is how the groceries get on the table. You sometimes make creative sacrifices to get the job done. All that said, I'm looking forward to getting out of the two-book-a-year schedule I'm on and to getting some self-indulgence going.

One day, when I am a braver man, I will tell her these things, and then I will look her in the eye, tell her I love her and ask her to be only mine. But until that day, we're just friends.

The act of reading is so intimate that readers are unpredictable.

Women. You tell me they're not all witches, and I'll tell you you haven't been paying attention.