Parameters are the things you bounce off to create art.

Right," said Fat Charlie conversationally. "You realize, of course, that this means war." It was the traditional war cry of a rabbit when pushed too far.

If you, as a parent, raise your children well, they won't need you anymore. If you did it properly, they go away.

I think that pretty much every form of fiction (I’d include fantasy, obviously) can actually be a real escape from places where you feel bad, and from bad places. It can be a safe place you go, like going on holiday, and it can be somewhere that, while you’ve escaped, actually teaches you things you need to know when you go back, that gives you knowledge and armour and tools to change the bad place you were in. So no, they’re not escapist. They’re escape.

I think that is something that I always like in my work - the sense of inclusion rather than the sense of otherness.

If writing a novel is a year's exile to a foreign country, writing a short story is a weekend spent somewhere exotic. They're much more like vacations, more exciting and different, and you're off.

Often you will discover that the harder you work, and the more wisely you work, the luckier you get. But there is luck, and it helps.