It's a terrible thing, isn't it, the way we throw people away?

In retrospect, it seems like everything in my life led to me becoming a writer. I just didn't realise it at the time.

I want to be independent. To meet interesting people. ... I just mean new people with clever things to say. Things I've never heard before. I want to be free. Open to whatever adventure comes along and sweeps me off my feet.

Memory is a cruel mistress with whom we all must learn to dance.

She says there are stories everywhere and that people who wait for the right one to come along before setting pen to paper end up with very empty pages.

Some say I'm an overnight success. Well, that was a very long night that lasted about 10 years. But while I do, of course, now feel the pressure having had books that have been very successful, I just know I have to concentrate on writing for myself. I can't worry about genres or markets or what might be commercial or not. That never works.

She'd slept terribly the night before. The room, the bed, were both comfortable enough, but she'd been plagued with strange dreams, the sort that lingered upon waking but slithered away from memory as she tried to grasp them. Only the tendrils of discomfort remained.