The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.

Lies and half-truths fall like snow, covering the things that I remember, the things I saw. A landscape, unrecognizable after a snowfall; that is that she has made of my life.

She was also an adult, and when adults fight children, adults always win.

We writers – and especially writers for children, but all writers – have an obligation to our readers: it's the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were – to understand that truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.

You know the best thing about aeroplanes? Apart from the peanuts in little silver bags, I mean. It's looking out of the windows at the clouds and thinking maybe I could go walking in there. Maybe it's a special place where everything's okay. Sometimes I do go walking in the clouds but it's just cold and wet and empty. But when you look out of a plane it's a special world... and I like it.

I started writing when I was about 20, 21 maybe.

He left the drapes open, watched the lights of the cars and of the fast food joints through the window glass, comforted to know there was another world out there, one he could walk to anytime he wanted.