A woman of many talents. And intelligent, too. He'd probably have to kill her soon.

I began attempting to write for children under the mistaken assumption that writing for children was easy.

Writers really do that. We weep over our characters. We are saddened sometimes for days when we say goodbye to a world or a character. They do become our best friends. I've probably spent more time with them over the past 22, 24 years than I have spent with most of the real members of my family.

There is little in life so reassuring as a genuine welcome.

Boredom is vastly underrated. Boredom means that nothing is trying to kill you every day.

When both my editors say 'This is really bad, you need to change this,' I ignore that at my peril.

When we come back to fantasy, I think we're actually coming back to the real bedrock of storytelling. Our national or international genre really is fantasy, if you think about the worldwide myths and legends and stories that we all know, whether we're talking about Little Red Riding Hood or the Arabian Nights or Noah's Ark or Hercules. These are stories that cross many cultures in much the same way that dragons cross many cultures.