I don't finish a lot of the books I read. I get enormous pleasure from reading half f them, two-thirds of them, even incredibly good books. But I don't feel it's my duty to finish them. I read the last few pages and find out what happens at the end.

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

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.

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

The song and dance didn't stop us dying. It just stopped the fear of death swallowing us up while we were still alive.

I think I have probably adjusted the way I see the world, I interpret the world and I communicate the world into book format simply because of this familiarity. Possibly in another society and another context I might have been a storyteller or who knows what.

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