As a teenager, I was always this strange mixture of kind of vice-captain of the rugby team and sensitive artist type the rest of the time. I was sent away to this public school in the middle of nowhere, and I think we managed to completely miss out on normal youth culture.

...and I went into the garden and lay down and looked at the stars in the sky and made myself negligible.

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

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.

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

I don't mean that literary fiction is better than genre fiction, On the contrary; novels can perform two functions and most perform only one.

Find the extraordinary inside the ordinary.