Classic authors should be older than I am, and wiser, and on-top of all their deadlines.

I could be blindfolded and dropped into the deepest ocean and I would know where to find you. I could be buried a hundred miles underground and I would know where you are.

The war had begun and nobody saw it. The storm was lowering and nobody knew it.

My ideal reader is me. And yes, my ideal reader comes with me and is forgiving.

We writers – and especially writers for children, but all writers – have an obligation to our readers: it's the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were – to understand that truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.

The TV's the altar. I'm what people are sacrificing to.' 'What do they sacrifice?' asked Shadow. 'Their time, mostly,' said Lucy. 'Sometimes each other.

Start telling the stories that only you can tell.