Of course I didn't pioneer the use of food in fiction: it has been a standard literary device since Chaucer and Rabelais, who used food wonderfully as a metaphor for sensuality.

I think if you are an outsider then you are an outsider always.

...we do not simply get showered with Hollywood money because we happened to write a little story about wizards one day. It's not winning the lottery. It's a real job, which real people do, and they have the same real problems as other real people.

She always had that about her, that look of otherness, of eyes that see things much too far, and of thoughts that wander off the edge of the world.

Remember, it's the winners write the history books, and the losers get the leavings.

I dream a lot, in colour and in sound and scent. Quite a few of my stories have come from dreams.

I don't think I've ever had a mentor. The closest thing is my friend Christopher Fowler, another writer. Chris kept me sane for a long time before I made it.