Feeling at peace, however fragilely, made it easy to slip into the visionary end of the dark-sight. The rose shadows said that they loved the sun, but that they also loved the dark, where their roots grew through the lightless mystery of the earth. The roses said: You do not have to choose.

What was she to say? "The prodigal has returned? The mutineer wishes to be reinstated? The subordinate, having gone to a great deal of trouble to prove her commander wrong, has come back and promises to be a good little subordinate hereafter, or at least until next time?

Laughter went on and on, like sunlight and stone, even if the human beings who laughed did not.

Tell me who you are. You need not tell me your name. Names have power, even human ones. Tell me where you live and what you do with your living.

I don't differentiate in the way that the genre creators want differentiation to be made. I feel that I have never written children's or YA stories particularly.

The magic in that country was so thick and tenacious that it settled over the land like chalk-dust and over floors and shelves like slightly sticky plaster-dust. (Housecleaners in that country earned unusually good wages.) If you lived in that country, you had to de-scale your kettle of its encrustation of magic at least once a week, because if you didn't, you might find yourself pouring hissing snakes or pond slime into your teapot instead of water.

It's hard to look too grand when you're led by someone who looks like a pudding with legs.