She decides to make a list of the things that make her happy. She writes 'plum-blossom' at the top of a piece of paper. Then she stares at the paper, unable to think of anything else. Eventually it begins to get dark.

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

Never trust a demon. He has a hundred motives for anything he does... ninety-nine of them, at least, are malevolent.

Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.

The search for the word gets no easier but nobody else is going to write your novel for you.

He wondered whether home was a thing that happened to a place after a while, or if it was something that you found in the end, if you simply walked and waited and willed it long enough.

There was no moon but the night sky was a riot of crisp and glittering autumn stars. There were streetlights too and lights on buildings and on bridges which looked like earthbound stars and they glimmered repeated as they were reflected with the city in the night water of the Thames. It’s fairyland thought Richard.