I've stayed in houses that were in the country, and in England, but I'm still not sure that I've stayed in an English country house.

The problem with growing up is that once you're grown up, the people who aren't grown up aren't fun anymore.

We have reached the point where ignorance and neglect are the best we can hope for in a ruler.

Supposedly I've got traces of an English accent, though I can't hear it. I must have inherited it from my mother, who's English, and then I think it was exacerbated by the fact that I live with an Australian.

Nothing is wrong with you. You're not different. Everybody feels as bad as you do: this is just what writing a novel feels like. To write a novel is to come in contact with raw, primal feelings, hopes and longings and psychic wounds, and try to make a big public word-sculpture out of them, and that is a crazy hard thing to do.

Book tours are excellent things, and one is lucky to get to go on one, but they have a way of leeching away one's will to live.

The line between outside and inside is fuzzier in fantasy. Maybe that's something people are looking for.