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.

What's really good is that there are people making stories and writing them and the vast majority never see the light of day and it doesn't matter a fig.

When I write I try as far as possible to forget I'm writing it at all. I tell it down onto the page, as if I'm telling it to one person only, my best friend.

Wars become history all too soon and are forgotten all too soon as well, before the lessons can be learned.

I could believe only in the hell I was living in, a hell on earth, and it was man-made, not God-made.

That's what this war is all about, my friend. It's about which of us is the crazier.And clearly you British have an advantage.You were crazy beforehand.

A lot of children, like I did, move away from words because of the fear - which is something you have to take out of education: the fear of worrying about what marks you'll get, detention, worrying about letting people down, your parents, teachers.