I took delight in hurling books across the room if I knew I would not be reading the second chapter. Then I’d go and pick them up again, because they are books, after all, and we are not savages.

I'd love to think that people in the future would gather in theatres, at conventions, and in darkened rooms, and read it out to each other.

I always say that if you're a novelist, the challenge is not writing what you think ought to happen, but trying in some way to write what did happen in a world that doesn't necessarily exist.

When you're starting off as a young writer, you look at all the stuff that's gone before and the stuff that's influenced you, and you reach the ladle of your imagination into this bubbling stew pot of all of this stuff, and you pour it out. And that's where you start from.

I see libraries and librarians as frontline soldiers in the war against illiteracy and the lack of imagination.

I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies.

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