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.

I am mad, I think. I am mad therefore I think. I am mad therefore I think I am.

Alternate history fascinates me, as it fascinates all novelists, because 'What if?' is the big thing.

In the end, it is my belief, words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.

I have been to the world's end and back and now I know what I would put in my bottom drawer .I would put my sisters.

Men had no purpose on earth whereas women were gods walking unrecognized among them.

Why do cats sleep so much? Perhaps they've been trusted with some major cosmic task, an essential law of physics - such as: if there are less than five million cats sleeping at any one time the world will stop spinning.