Oddly my name has been no professional help at all! It seems to have made no difference. I admire him hugely, both for his benevolence and his enormous psychological perception.

The world's tragedy is that men love women, women love children, and children love hamsters.

You can't help parts of yourself leaking into other characters.

I always love writing about children.

I'm actually rather orderly, although the way that I write is not.

My view of an excellent novel was probably set in the golden age of fiction in the 19th century: narrative, character and voice are of equal importance.

You can change yourself and you can change the situation but you absolutely cannot change other people. Only they can do that.