The problems with success, frankly, are infinitely preferable to the problems of failure.

She had such unusual eyes. They made me think of the seaside, and so I called her Ocean, and could not have told you why.

I had to persuade a dog to swallow a pill. I twittered for advice and I got suggestion after suggestion. Most of them didn't work. 'Put the pill in the sausage.' No - that doesn't work. 'Cheese.' No. Then someone said: 'You wrap it in butter and it will slide down.' I tried it and it worked! And I'd learnt how to give a pill to a dog through the magic of Twitter.

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.

Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled but halved. No man is an island

If you want to imagine the future, imagine a boy and his dog and his friends. And a summer that never ends.

Be boring, knowing everything. You have to give all that stuff up if you're going to muck about here.