Diana used to tell me she had a travel jinx, something I only really started to believe when the plane door fell off.

I'm writing. The pages are starting to stack up. My morale is improving the more I feel like a writer.

Normally, in anything I do, I'm fairly miserable. I do it, and I get grumpy because there is a huge, vast gulf, this aching disparity, between the platonic ideal of the project that was living in my head, and the small, sad, wizened, shaking, squeaking thing that I actually produce.

People can get involved in wonderfully creative ways that have nothing to do with you, but spark off things you begin with.

Well meaning adults can easily destroy a child's love of reading - do not discourage children from reading because you feel they're reading the wrong thing. There is no such thing as the wrong thing to be reading and no bad fiction for kids.

Books smell and feel better. They have that wonderful thingness of turning the pages.

It is sometimes a mistake to climb; it is always a mistake never even to make the attempt.