Children simply don't make the distinction; a book is either good or bad. And some of the books they think are good are very, very bad indeed.

And what he meant was that maths wasn't like life because in life there are no straightforward answers in the end

Appalling things can happen to children. And even a happy childhood is filled with sadnesses.

And then I thought that I had to be like Sherlock Holmes and I had to detach my mind at will to a remarkable degree so that I did not notice how much it was hurting inside my head.

People think that alien spaceships would be solid and made of metal and have lights all over them and move slowly through the sky because that is how we would build a spaceship if we were able to build one that big. But aliens, if they exist, would probably be very different from us. They might look like big slugs, or be flat like reflections. Or they might be bigger than planets. Or they might not have bodies at all. They might just be information, like in a computer. And their spaceships might look like clouds, or be made up of unconnected objects like dust or leaves.

Family, that slippery word, a star to every wandering bark, and everyone sailing under a different sky.

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.