Most adults, unlike most children, understand the difference between a book that will hold them spellbound for a rainy Sunday afternoon and a book that will put them in touch with a part of themselves they didn't even know existed.

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.

I think I've learnt that there is no character so strange that you haven't shared their experience in some small way.

I want my name to mean me.

I like poetry when I don't quite understand why I like it. Poetry isn't just a question of wrapping something up and giving it to someone else to unwrap. It just doesn't work like that.

I knew there was a story; once you find a dog with a fork through it, you know there's a story there.

If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up.