in skies of deepening blue the moon, heaven's queen was now afloat

Life has a funny way of becoming ordinary as soon as it can.

I think you can get a sort of intensity and an edginess offering nine stories in a book. Competing versions of things.

John McGovern taught me that it's OK to write repeatedly about the same things.

I never listen to music when I am writing. It would be impossible. I listen to Bach in the mornings, mostly choral music; also some Handel, mostly songs and arias; I like Schubert's and Beethoven's chamber music and Sibelius' symphonies; for opera, I listen to Mozart and in recent years Wagner.

I live in words. I like looking at things, but I don't have a strong visual imagination.

When a book comes from the publisher and you see it for the first time... Of course it's not remotely like seeing a baby for the first time, but I can remember with each book what room I was in when I opened it. That would be excitement, though, I think. Not pride.