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.

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

I think most writers feel like they're on the outside looking in much of the time... All of us feel, to a certain extent, alienated from the stuff going on around us.

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

And because there is something they can’t see people think it has to be special, because people always think there is something special about what they can’t see, like the dark side of the moon, or the other side of a black hole, or in the dark when they wake up at night and they’re scared.

And it's best if you know a good thing is going to happen, like an eclipse or getting a microscope for Christmas. And it's bad if you know a bad thing is going to happen, like having a filling or going to France. But I think it is worst if you don't know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing which is going to happen.

Many childrens writers dont have children of their own