And when the universe has finished exploding all the stars will slow down, like a ball that has been thrown into the air, and they will come to a halt and they will all begin to fall towards the centre of the universe again. And then there will be nothing to stop us seeing all the stars in the world because they will all be moving towards us, gradually faster and faster, and we will know that the world is going to end soon because when we look up into the sky at night there will be no darkness, just the blazing light of billions and billions of stars, all falling.

When I was writing for children, I was writing genre fiction. It was like making a good chair. However beautiful it looked, it needed four legs of the same length, it had to be the right height and it had to be comfortable.

I want my name to mean me.

The way of creating believable characters is not by conforming to a set of PC rules.

I find people confusing.

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

I've come to realize that most good ideas are precisely the ones you can't describe.