Unless you can be in a place yourself and go through the subject of your story yourself, the next best thing is not to read a book about it, or see a movie about it, it's to talk to the people who've been there.

cause when there's life there's still hope

I don't know, but I do think that everyone has a story to tell. The question is, can they find the voice and the confidence to tell it? We lack the encouragement as young people to believe this; we very often think that writing is for clever people, which it isn't.

Any story that gets us thinking, and particularly young people, thinking why? Whether it's as a result of reading the book, or coming out of the theatre or the cinema, I think we should just simply be asking the question 'why'? Why did it happen to those people? Was it necessary? And anything that gets us thinking like that is really important.

Like most writers, I sit in a room and scribble a story and you don't have a connection with the people who take your story, whether it be to the stage or to the screen.

Genuinely good people are like that. The sun shines out of them. They warm you right through.

Characters are the key to a good book. It took me several novels to comprehend that.