I had not yet learned that we make our own destiny, it springs from within us. It is not the outward events but what we allow ourselves to make of them that count.

My head reeled at the sheer and startling beauty, the wide, bare openness of it. The sense of space, the vastness of the sky above and on either side made my heart race, I would have travelled a thousand miles to see this. I had never imagined such a place.

Whatever was about, whoever I had seen, and heard rocking, and who had passed me by just now, whoever had opened the locked door was not 'real'. No. But what was 'real'? At that moment I began to doubt my own reality.

I like going into a school matinee. I like to be behind the stage because there's a spy-hole and what you see is the best moment in all theatre.

I'm really quite hard to scare so it was about mining times when I have jumped, and what creeps me out.

Certainly with a book, people are going to be able to read it and give themselves permission to have that delicious feeling of being terrified because they're in a safe place while they're reading. That's what you can rely on as a writer, that people can let themselves be really frightened because they're really all right. Being frightened when you're not sure you're all right is a big difference.

This gardener will be out in the very early morning and from late afternoon, attentive to small changes in the quality of light and the atmosphere, as well as to every nuance of the season, which combine to create perfection.