Joseph Beringer...dances around behind me singing some poorly rhymed and slightly dirty song about my [racing] odds at my skirts. 'I don't even wear skirts,' I snap at him. 'Especially,' he says, 'in my daydreams.

Sam:"Okay, what words would you use then?" I leaned back in the seat, thinking, as Sam looked at me doubtfully. He was right to look doubtful. My head didn't work with words very well- at least not in this abstract, descriptive sort of way. Grace:"Sensitive" I tried. Sam translated: "Squishy" Grace:"Creative" Sam:"Dangerously emo" Grace:"Thoughtful" Sam:"Feng shui." I laughed so hard I snorted. Grace:"How did you get feng shui out of thoughtful?" Sam:"You know, because in feng shui, you arrange funiture and plants and stuff in thoughtful ways.

I’d always thought I was above being fascinated by anyone but myself.

And there is the girl. When I first see her and her dun mare from my vantage point on the cliff road, I am struck first not by the fact that she is a girl, but by the fact that she's in the ocean. it's the dreaded second day, the day people start to die, and no one will get close to the surf. But there she is, trotting up to the knee in the water. Fearless.

Imagine my delight and awe when I discovered such a thing was a real genre - contemporary fantasy or urban fantasy. It was like having my birthday twice in one week and cookie dough for breakfast.

When Ronan thought of Gansey, he thought of moving into Monmouth Manufacturing, of nights spent in companionable insomnia, of a summer searching for a king, of Gansey asking the Gray Man for his life. Brothers.

My most memorable adventure was investigating the chalk cliffs in Yorkshire. While clambering over kelp-covered boulders half-covered by the sea, I fell and smashed my tail bone on one of them.