And Father said, "Christopher, do you understand that I love you?" And I said "Yes," because loving someone is helping them when they get into trouble, and looking after them, and telling them the truth, and Father looks after me when I get into trouble, like coming to the police station, and he looks after me by cooking meals for me, and he always tells me the truth, which means that he loves me.

If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up.

... He had always rather liked emergencies. Other people's at any rate. They put your own problems into perspective. It was like being on a ferry. You didn't have to think about what you had to do or where you had to go for the next few hours. It was all laid out for you.

Science and literature give me answers. And they ask me questions I will never be able to answer.

I knew there was a story; once you find a dog with a fork through it, you know there's a story there.

I've come to realize that most good ideas are precisely the ones you can't describe.

But I said that you could still want something that is very unlikely to happen.