I was brought up Irish, where there was room for my own private world.

When I was a child, love to me was what the sea is to a fish: something you swim in while you are going about the important affairs of life.

I've felt that if I just used initials nobody would know whether I was a man or a woman, a dog or a tiger. I could hide from view, like a bat on the underside of a branch.

I don't think that children, if left to themselves, feel that there is an author behind a book, a somebody who wrote it. Grown-ups have fostered this quotient of identity, particularly teachers. Write a letter to your favorite author and so forth. When I was a child I never realized that there were authors behind books. Books were there as living things, with identities of their own.

A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.

What I want to know is this: Are the stars gold paper or is the gold paper stars?

If you want to find Cherry-Tree Lane all you have to do is ask the Policeman at the cross-roads.