Wherever my story takes me, however dark and difficult the theme, there is always some hope and redemption, not because readers like happy endings, but because I am an optimist at heart. I know the sun will rise in the morning, that there is a light at the end of every tunnel.

I write fiction. I make things up, it's what I do.

Everyone is interested in war, in that people don't want it to happen. I'm much more interested in peace than in war but it's important to understand why we fight.

There's room for all sorts of magic and miracles in this world - that's what I think.

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.

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

It is the child's understanding that teaches the adults the way of the future. They're still doing it today with modern technology.