Death had ruled my life till I met Lady Dance. Her dance had set me free.

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.

There is still in many schools complete misapprehension that children with reading difficulties are stupid. It is so easy to teach a child that they're dumb. There needs to be a recognition that you need different ways to teach children who have got reading problems.

Very much in my books people find not surrogate families because they are real families. We've got families that we're related to by blood but we've also got families that we acquire. And those too I think are pretty much part of my books.

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.

One of my extraordinary regrets about my death is not so much that it's going to happen but simply that I'll never know what happens next.

Dance, my darling dance! If you dance then death can't catch you! Nothing bad can touch you! Dance!