I read very, very little fiction as a kid. All the books I can remember are junior science books.

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.

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

Madness doesn't happen to someone alone. Very few people have experiences that are theirs alone.

I've worked in television long enough to know that when you stop enjoying that type of thing you go home and do something else.

All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I'm not meant to call them stupid, even though this is what they are.

Then he asked if I didn’t like things changing. And I said I wouldn’t mind things changing if I became an astronaut, for example, which is one of the biggest changes you can imagine, apart from becoming a girl or dying.