If you take myth and folklore, and these things that speak in symbols, they can be interpreted in so many ways that although the actual image is clear enough, the interpretation is infinitely blurred, a sort of enormous rainbow of every possible colour you could imagine.

...don't spoil my learning process!

She said 'Over my dead body!' so I took her at her word.

If you must know, I-I had never in my life kissed a young lady, and you are far too beautiful to me to want to get it wrong!

Chrestomanci smiled and swept out of the room like a very long procession of one person.

And indeed if you think you're a genius at something, what you achieve is very much according to your expectations; if you think you're no good, you're not going to get anywhere.

Fantasy for me as a kid was real, and I had a fantasy about what life was, whether it was sort of wicked and dire, or wholly normal, or whatever. Anything really close to home is not, it seems to me, what a good book should be about.