It's just that to a lot of British people George Bush represents the worst of all things American. He's the right-wing Christian crusader, the toxic Texan who refused Kyoto, the poll-cheat eel who undermined democracy on the back of something called 'chads,' a notion we've never entirely grasped.

What I mean is this: you meet someone, you think about them. You're already changing because of the way you think about them. You meet them again, you think about them some more, you're changing again. And on it goes. You are changing right now. Before my eyes.

I am less interested in ghosts than in people who see ghosts.

Fantasy gets a mixed reception - a lot of fantasy is formulaic but most of the award-winning fantasy on the contrary tends to be the stuff at the edges of the genre, rather than swimming in the middle.

Because two people in love don't make a hive mind. Neither should they want to be a hive mind, to think the same, to know the same. It's about being separate and still loving each other, being distinct from each other. One is the violin string one is the bow.

That's emails for ya: sometimes they're like an arrow that hits so deep in the target, you can't pull it out.

I've been a professional writer for 20 years, and there are contours in that time, crescents and troughs.