When I started as a writer, I knew nothing about publishing-nothing about anything!

There was no violence, no speed. It moved to the rhythm of an elder dance, putting all the rituals of the world to shame. Black, silver, gold and moon-opal, night and sea, fire, earth, air and water.

I've been criticised for writing in too complex a manner for younger people.

At an early school, when I was about 5, they asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. Everyone said silly things, and I said I wanted to be an actress. So that was what I wanted to be, but what I was, of course, was a writer.

Robespierre, crippled and blind, has yet to be healed to the knowledge that service - his desire - is a deed of savage-speaking gentleness, not soft-spoken savagery.

Hope is a punishable offense. The verdict is always death; one more death of the heart.

Im a devotee of Dracula, which was a pathfinder in horror and vampire fiction.