You know what my mum once said?’ said Rosie… ‘She said that if a just-married couple put a coin in a jar every time they make love in their first year, and take a coin out for every time that they make love in the years that follow, the jar will never be emptied.’ And this means…?’ Well’, she said. ‘It’s interesting, isn’t it?

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.

In my dream, it was the tongue of what is, and anything spoken in it becomes real, because nothing said in that language can be a lie. It is the most basic building brick of everything.

None of us know where our stories come from. That's why writers make fun of people who ask us where we get our ideas... because we don't know.

I very rarely want to go back and fix things, because I'm much more interested in the next thing, and in taking what I learned from the things that don't work, and applying them to new things that may work.

We often confuse what we wish for with what is.

You could fire a machine gun randomly through the pages of Lord of the Rings and never hit any women.