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

From a good book, I want to be taken to the very edge. I want a glimpse into that outer darkness.

Everyone has learning difficulties, because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult.

I better make the plot good. I wanted to make it grip people on the first page and have a big turning point in the middle, as there is, and construct the whole thing like a bit of a roller coaster ride...

You love someone, you've got to let something go.

Jane Austen was writing about boring people with desperately limited lives. We forget this because we've seen too many of her books on screen.

There's something rather wonderful about the fact that Oxford is a very small city that contains most of the cultural and metropolitan facilities you could want, in terms of bookshops, theatre, cinema, conversation. But it's near enough to London to get here in an hour, and it's near enough to huge open spaces without which I would go insane.