The short story is still like the novel's wayward younger brother, we know that it's not respectable - but I think that can also add to the glory of it.

Sometimes I wish that just solving the plot problems was enough. And then elves would go and do all the actual work moving the words around.

I've been inspired by dreams - I've even stolen scenes or images or characters from them.

There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous.

The ducks in St James's Park are so used to being fed bread by secret agents meeting clandestinely that they have developed their own Pavlovian reaction. Put a St James's Park duck in a laboratory cage and show it a picture of two men -- one usually wearing a coat with a fur collar, the other something sombre with a scarf -- and it'll look up expectantly.

It begins, as most things begin, with a song.

Life is always going to be stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be convincing, and life doesn't.