I began to feel lighthearted. Don't ever do that; it tempts some dark and evil force abroad in the universe.

The other writer who had a very important early influence on me when I was about 17 was C.S. Lewis.

I like writing about women, weak and strong, pathetic and heroic. I like writing about men, ditto. And all the variants of men and women, beasts and demons.

No one is ever ordinary.

I submitted manuscripts to publishers. This was not so much a feeling that I should be published as a wish to escape the feared and hated drudgery of normal work.

What is any of this to us? Time is endless and ours. Love and Death are only the games we play in it.

I began to feel lighthearted. Don't ever do that; it tempts some dark and evil force abroad in the universe.