Often the true hero and heroines of my books are the houses, the places, the communities where people find a home.

I'd love to see a new form of social security ... everyone taught how to grow their own; fruit and nut trees planted along every street, parks planted out to edibles, every high rise with a roof garden, every school with at least one fruit tree for every kid enrolled.

I don't read like other people do - back and forth, across the page. I tend to scan a page at a time.

I might be able to find out what happened 6,000 years ago but I will never know what happens 6,000 years in the future! And that is not fair, blast it.

A lot of dyslexic kids are actually more intelligent than average and are very good, because they've got very good memories, at disguising the fact that they can't read or have got problems in reading and literacy.

We need to actually teach kids that books aren't like broccoli. You don't have to eat every bit on your plate. It's like secret adult's business. It's the secret we never, ever tell our children. No adult ever read a book because it's good for us. We read because it is fun.

Morning: Slept. Afternoon: Slept. Evening: Ate grass. Night: Ate grass. Decided grass is boring. Scratched. Hard to reach the itchy bits. Slept.