You need to play to win. But you also need to win ... to play.

Just as a pebble thrown into the water creates ripples, so our thoughts create similar effects on our palms.

A boy and a girl, dressed in the T-shirts and denim that are the shabby uniform of this age.

I was brought up in a home where I saw my parents read and I was taken to bookshops and libraries, so I grew up feeling very comfortable around books. Also, Ireland is a country which has honoured its writers and poets, so when someone says they wanted to be a writer, its not mocked or looked down upon.

I'm probably better known in the US as a YA writer, I have a huge body of adult horror and fantasy behind me.

I am a writer (and one day I'll be an author). For a long time I was a bookseller (who wrote) or a TV producer (who wrote), but for the last decade or so, its been "writer."

Don't ever, for any reason, do anything to anyone, for any reason, ever, no matter what.