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.

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

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.

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

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

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.