I want my name to mean me.

As a kid, I didn't read a great deal of fiction, and I've forgotten most of what I did read.

And what he meant was that maths wasn't like life because in life there are no straightforward answers in the end

...and there was nothing to do except to wait and to hurt.

I think the U.K. is too small to write about from within it and still make it seem foreign and exotic and interesting.

For me, disability is a way of getting some extremity, some kind of very difficult situation, that throws an interesting light on people.

The most difficult book I wrote was the fourth in a series of linked children's books. It was like pulling teeth because the publisher wanted exactly the same but completely different. I'd much rather just do something completely different even if there's a risk of it going wrong.