There's a but, isn't there?" said Coraline. "I can feel it. Like a rain cloud.

Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there'll always be better writers than you and there'll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that - but you are the only you.

I think radio plays are my favourite medium, as they make the listener work and create and contribute in a way that TV and film can never do, and they have an immediacy that written prose often lacks.

You attend the funeral, you bid the dead farewell. You grieve. Then you continue with your life. And at times the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on. She is dead. You are alive. So live.

And he waited. It was only for a few seconds, but it felt like a small forever.

If you dare nothing, then when the day is over, nothing is all you will have gained.

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