I've always found the world is the most extraordinarily fascinating place and the more data you get, the more you can actually put pieces into this jigsaw.

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.

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

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.

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'm very close to my parents. I admire them and respect them enormously. But my childhood unfortunately coincided with the end of their marriage. They are two people who should never, ever have got married.

I've always found the world is the most extraordinarily fascinating place and the more data you get, the more you can actually put pieces into this jigsaw.