Water is the life-giver and the death-bringer.

The two that are one, the one that is all!

I have a huge music library and deliberately choose the piece of music to match the piece I'm writing. So, every book I write has its own "soundtrack."

They [my characters]speak to me all the time! In fact some of them never shut up!

The people that you work with are, when you get down to it, your very best friends.

I published my first book in 1982 - a collection of Irish folklore called Irish Folk & Fairy Tales. It is still in print today. My first young adult book was published a couple of years later, and I've been writing in both genres ever since.

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.