Perhaps his gloom was due to his profession, that he lived among fallen empires, and in reading these languages that had not been spoken by the common man in centuries, he had all about him the ruin of language, evidence of toppled suburbs, grass growing among the mosaics, and voices that had been choked with poison, iron, age, or ash.

I could see my face, crying, in her blank eye.

I can't tell you how irritating it is to be an atheist in a haunted house.

I don’t know. D’you think? He’s pretty wide in the chest.” The girl looked at me, and I was frozen. So I said, “Yeah. I work out.” Violet asked me, “What are you? What’s your cup size?” I shrugged and played along. “Like, nine and a half?” I guessed. “That’s my shoe size.” Violet said, “I think he’d like something slinky, kind of silky.” I said, “As long as you can stop me from rubbing myself up against a wall the whole time.” “Okay,” said Violet, holding her hands up like she was annoyed. “Okay, the chemise last week was a mistake.

Why not write a book which is as sophisticated as a book for an adult, but is about the concerns that teenagers actually have?

The natural world is so adaptable...So adaptable you wonder what's natural.

A lot of the drive to make narratives came from having to play by myself as a 5- or 6-year-old in the woods.