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.

With English literature, if you do a bit of shonky spelling, no one dies, but if you're half-way through a maths calculation and you stick in an extra zero, everything just crashes into the ravine.

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.

I think one of the things you have to learn if you're going to create believable characters is never to make generalizations about groups of people.

You could ask for hugs if you were feeling sad or you'd hurt yourself, but when it happened spontaneously it made you feel warm inside.

..and only sticks and stones can break my bones.

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