A spider brings good luck before midnight and bad luck after.

From a very young age my mother persuaded me that I could write for fun, but I had to have a proper job - very good advice.

The right circumstances sometimes happen of their own accord, slyly, without fanfare, without warning. Layman's alchemy. . . . The magic of everyday things.

Children are knives, my mother once said. They don’t mean to, but they cut. And yet we cling to them, don’t we, we clasp them until the blood flows.

I'm phobic about the idea of being constrained.

Anything based on ancient texts is difficult for a modern reader to get their head around.

I have a tendency to pick up my own challenges. The more difficult something it is, the more I want to try it.