Sometimes people graduate but they don't leave. They hang around for years, for no reason. I would think of ghosts like that, I decided.

It took a lot of women like that, a lot of women who said "I'm not going to do what you expect me to do, because you have no idea what I'm capable of. I'm going to get dirty and use tools and live the way I want" to move the world forward.

Being an author means, almost by definition, that you make up characters and then complicate their lives. That's it, really. You make up characters and give them problem after problem after problem.

The English play hockey in any weather. Thunder, lightning, plague of locusts... nothing can stop the hockey. Do not fight the hockey, for the hockey will win.

It was clearly one of those mornings when I was particularly American.

Were you playing with Stuart?" she asked. The question was loaded. I was a filthy, filthy woman, and even the five-year-old knew it.

Did I just kill someone?" "You can't kill a dead person," Callum said. "Makes no sense.