I always thought it hadn't influenced me very much, but I heard from many people from England that many motives from German fairytales are to be found in my books.

Power. Intoxicating. Like a fine wine.

I think we should sometimes read stories where everything's different from our world, don't you agree? There's nothing's like it for teaching us to wonder why trees are green and not red, and why we have five fingers rather than six.' --spoken by The Bluejay, aka Mo the Bookbinder, from 'Inkdeath

Dustfinger inspected his reddened fingers and felt the taut skin. ‘He might tell me how my story ends,’ he murmured. Meggie looked at him in astonishment. ‘You mean you don’t know?’ Dustfinger smiled. Meggie still didn’t particularly like his smile. It seemed to appear only to hide something else. ‘What’s so unusual about that, princess?’ he asked quietly. ‘Do you know how your story ends?’ Meggie had no answer for that.

He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her full on the mouth. His skin was wet with rain. When she didn't pull away, he took her face between his hands and kissed her again, on her forehead, on her nose, on her mouth once more. "You will come, won't you? Promisse!" he whispered.

And I plan to write a sequel to Dragon Rider.

But after all, the villains are the salt in the soup of a story.