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

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

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

Every day the eye is subject to a thousand tiny shocks as a thousand industries compete for the eye-kick, the visual hook that will lock the consumer into product for that crucial second where the tiny - or not so tiny - leap of the imagination is made.

But there are times in life when a door opens and you are offered a glimpse of the light on the water, and you know that if you don't take it, that door slams shut, and maybe forever. Maybe you fool yourself into thinking that you had a choice at all; maybe you were always going to say yes. Maybe refusing was no more a choice than is holding your breath. You were always going to breathe. You were always going to say yes.

The thing is, when everyone is trying to persuade you that a thing you know to be true isn't actually true, you start to believe them: not because it is true but because it's easier. It's just the easy way out.

If critics of 'readable fiction' want literature to change the ways people dream, they need first to come down from the mountain and speak to the people.