I love the structural part of the writing process.

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.

Nell was not one for friends and had never hidden her distaste for most other humans, their neurotic compulsion for the acquisition of allies.

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.

They say everyone needs something to love.

Curiosity might have killed the cat, but little girls usually fared much better.

I probably coughed self-pityingly in response, little aware that I was about to cross a tremendous threshold beyond which there would be no return, that in my hands I held an object whose simple appearance belied its profound power. All true readers have a book, a moment, like the one I describe, and when Mum offered me that much-read library copy mine was upon me.