Fiction that responds to recent world events is a hostage to fortune because all momentous events look very different a year, two years, three years later.

Well, we're meant to be writing stories today.

The one thing you have to do if you write a book is put yourself in someone else's shoes. The reader's shoes. You've got to entertain them.

I thought Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything was remarkable. Managing to be entertaining while still delivering all that hard science was a pretty good trick to pull off.

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.

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

Find the extraordinary inside the ordinary.