I'm always aware that I risk being taken for a neurasthenic prima donna when I explain to someone who wants 'just a little' of my time that five minutes of the wrong kind of distraction can ruin a working day.

How easy it was to make people happy, when you didn't want or need anything from them.

At times ... one is downright thankful for the self-absorption of other people.

Dreams say what they mean, but they don't say it in daytime language.

The characters that I create are parts of myself and I send them on little missions to find out what I don’t know yet.

During the act of writing I have told myself something that I didn't know I knew.

I confess, right at the start, to the doubts - and sometimes outright dreads - that go with me as I climb the stairs to my study in the morning, coffee mug in hand: I have to admit to the habitual apprehension mixed with a sort of reverence, as I light the incense . . . and wonder: what is going to happen today? Will anything happen? Will the angel come today?