Mourning Ruby is not a flat landscape: it is more like a box with pictures painted on every face. And each face is also a door which opens, I hope, to take the reader deep into the book.

When you are young you don't always realise how full of doubts everybody is.

I hope that readers will tear through my books because they can't stop themselves - and then, maybe, read them again and find new things there.

The language has got to be fully alive - I can't bear dull, flaccid writing myself and I don't see why any reader should put up with it.

We are creatures of story.

I can remember being in my pram: children stayed in their prams much longer then than they do now. A big bouncy pram with black covers and a hood with metal clips that could trap your fingers. I was looking up at my sister who was sitting on the pram seat, with her back to me.

The human longing for story is so powerful, so primitive, that it seems like something not learned, but locked into our genes.