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

It's not a bad thing for a writer not to feel at home. Writers - we're much more comfortable at parties standing in the corner watching everybody else having a good time than we are mingling.

From meetings and partings none can ever escape. Nor from magic.

I have always felt that violence was the last refuge of the incompetent, and empty threats the last sanctuary of the terminally inept.

I think radio plays are my favourite medium, as they make the listener work and create and contribute in a way that TV and film can never do, and they have an immediacy that written prose often lacks.

I was a book-y child. I was much more book-y than dark.

My parents would frisk me before family events, and find the book, and lock it in the car. And then be disappointed where, somewhere at the event, I would find a book and sit under a table where nobody could get me and go back into book land.