I like stirring the pot - I think it's part of my duty, to shake people up a bit - make them look at things in a different way.

I would hate to live in the country, unless I was living on a farm.

People's lives are in the care of the railways when they get on a train. The railways should remember that.

I hope in my books I help children to see their strengths, and show them I have some idea of what they may occasionally be going through. Especially at tricky moments when it is easier to go back and evade things rather than go forwards and confront them.

All writers are thieves; theft is a necessary tool of the trade.

People who don't read seem to me mysterious. I don't know how they think or learn about other people. Novels are a very important part of our education.

Margaret Thatcher was in my year, and our first-year college photograph shows us standing side by side in the back row. We were both grammar school girls on state scholarships.