I will write in words of fire. I will write them on your skin. I will write about desire. Write beginnings, write of sin. You’re the book I love the best, your skin only holds my truth, you will be a palimpsest lines of age rewriting youth. You will not burn upon the pyre. Or be buried on the shelf. You’re my letter to desire: And you’ll never read yourself. I will trace each word and comma As the final dusk descends, You’re my tale of dreams and drama, Let us find out how it ends.

Children's fiction is the most important fiction of all.

Virginia is the place, where, technologically speaking, they will burn people at the stake for possessing such things as toasters.

I was a scholarship minor public school day boy at Ardingly College and later Whitgift School. Then, straight into work as a journalist - a wonderful thing for a writer.

Not gay, just never met the right woman.

You shine like a beacon in a dark world.

For me, the glory of my first 25 years as a writer was I could put things off as long as I wanted.