My house is modern, but I like my writing room to be old fashioned. I write on a little wooden secretary desk.

When most people looked at Josie Tyrell, they only saw a certain collection of bones, a selection of forms filling space. But Michael saw past the mouth and the eyes, the architecture of the body, her fleshly masquerade. Other boys were happy enough to enjoy the show, they just wanted to be entertained in the body's shadow theater. But Michael had to come backstage. He went down into the mines, into the dark, and brought up the gold, your new self, a better self. But what good was it if he was just going to leave her behind?

The sound of her laughter was sticky as sap, the smell of night-blooming jasmine soft as a milk bath.

Writing mirrors the interior self. You know, any book is like the perfect blueprint of the psyche of the author.

Panic was the worst thing. When you panicked, you couldn't see possibilities. Then came despair.

In a perverse way, I was glad for the stitches, glad it would show, that there would be scars. What was the point in just being hurt on the inside? It should bloody well show.

It's their skins I'm peeling," she said. "The skins of the insipid scribblers, which I graft to the page, creating monsters of meaninglessness.