Richard did not believe in angels, he never had. He was damned if he was going to start now. Still, it was much easier not to believe in something when it was not actually looking directly at you and saying your name.

This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard.

This is the only country in the world, that worries about what it is. The rest of them know what they are. No one ever needs to go searching for the heart of Norway. Or looks for the soul of Mozambique. They know what they are.

The house smelled musty and damp, and a little sweet, as if it were haunted by the ghosts of long-dead cookies.

I would read. I would explore

I used to get my best ideas from being bored, and now, if I even think I'm being faintly bored, I have two million Twitter followers I can engage with. It's great, but I also think it's important to be able to let your thoughts flow and percolate.

Genre fiction, as Terry Pratchett has pointed out, is a stew. You take stuff out of the pot, you put stuff back. The stew bubbles on.