Time was a thief, he stole your life away from you and the only way you could get it back was to outwit him and snatch it right back.

The beginning is the word and the end is silence. And in between are all the stories.

I find the past so fascinating. Photographs are strange, almost surreal, almost here yet gone. I slip into thinking what the past must have been like and I enjoy creating that ambience and atmosphere - 1730 to around 1870 is the most interesting period.

Sometimes,' Sylvie said, 'one can mistake gratitude for love.

Whatever happens to you, embrace it, the good and the bad equally. Death is just one more thing to be embraced.

I did feel when my mother died if anyone was going to haunt me it would be her. And she hasn't, so I think it is possibly the end.

I don't have goals when writing books, apart from getting to the end. I have rather vague ideas about how I want things to feel, I'm big on ambience. I have a title, a beginning and a probable ending and go from there.