Mother used to say it meant Christopher was a nice name because it was a story about being kind and helpful, but I do not want my name to mean a story about being kind and helpful. I want my name to mean me.

As a kid, I didn't read a great deal of fiction, and I've forgotten most of what I did read.

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

A lot of roles for people with disabilities are quite patronising. It's a real pity when they are just used to give dull PC kudos to a drama, or when they're wheeled on in a tokenistic way without any real involvement in the plot.

Find the extraordinary inside the ordinary.

Books are like people. Some look deceptively attractive from a distance, some deceptively unappealing; some are easy company, some demand hard work that isn’t guaranteed to pay off. Some become friends and say friends for life. Some change in our absence - or perhaps it is we who change in theirs - and we meet up again only to find that we don’t get along any more.

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.