If you have to keep a secret it's because you shouldn't be doing it in the first place

It's the face itself that I love, not that face at twenty-eight or thirty-four or forty-three. It's that face.

Being a decent human being will require effort and energy.

Well, it's so hard for books to take off. You give years of your life to something that probably won't happen, so when it does, it feels a little unjust.

She made a firm resolution, one of the resolutions she was making almost daily these days. No more sleepovers, no more writing poetry, no more wasting time. Time to tidy up your life. Time to start again.

I usually write on a computer - unless I get stuck, at which point I switch to write by hand. I think that's common among writers if they get cornered on something.

I had always been led to believe that ageing was a slow and gradual process, the creep of a glacier. Now I realise that it happens in a rush, like snow falling off a roof.