...pain reaches a certain point and does not get worse but remains in all its intensity and you can survive it.

The possibility that hope comes out of hopelessness and that the opposite of things carry the seeds of birth - love out of hate, good out of evil. Didn't flowers grow out of dirt?

It came to me that hell would not be fire and smoke after all but arctic, everything white and frigid. Hell would be not anger but indifference.

My dream was to be known as a writer and to be able to produce at least one book that would be read by people. That dream came true with the publication of my first novel - and all the rest has been a sweet bonus.

Family life was wonderful. The streets were bleak. The playgrounds were bleak. But home was always warm. My mother and father had a great relationship. I always felt 'safe' there.

That's what Archie did - built a house nobody could anticipate a need for, except himself, a house that was invisible to everyone else.

When I write, I never think of segments as chapters; I think of them as scenes. I always visualize them in my mind. Then I try to get the scene down on paper as closely as I can. That's the one thing that readers don't see - what you have in your mind. The reader can only see what you get on the page.