I grew up on a suburban street with lace curtains and dull neighbours, so I made up stories to tell my friend, in which they became serial killers and burglars. She told her mother, who then told mine.

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.

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

The kind of response I hope for when I write my novels for children: to give them a chance to recognize something of their own feelings -- about themselves, their parents, their friends -- and their own situation as a kind of subject race, always at the mercy of the adults who mostly run their lives for them.

A writer's work may be a coded autobiography, but only a very close friend could decipher it.

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.

I've never found it made the slightest difference being a woman - though there is a sort of feeling that as you get older you're not so interesting.