I think about death a lot, I really do, because I can't believe I won't exist. It's the ego isn't it? I feel that I should retreat into a better form of Zen Buddhism than this kind of ego-dominated thing. But I don't know, I mean, I want to come back as a tree but I suspect that it's just not going to happen, is it?

When you chopped logs with the ax and they split open they smelled beautiful, like Christmas. But when you split someone's head open it smelled like abattoir and quite overpowered the scent of the wild lilacs you'd cut and brought into the house only this morning, which was already another life.

Sylvie's knowledge, like Izzie's, was random yet far-ranging, 'The sign that one has acquired one's learning from reading novels rather than an education.

Feminism is such an incredibly awkward word for us these days, isnt it? Not to be feminist would be bizarre, wouldnt it?

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.

Ethics are not necessarily to do with being law-abiding. I am very interested in the moral path, doing the right thing.

If people believed in eternal damnation they might not be seizing the day quite so much.