The Golden Compass is one of the best fantasy / adventure stories that I have read. This is a book no one should miss.

If you do not love what you do, if you are not appropriately grateful for the chance to create something magical each time you sit down at the computer or with a pencil and paper in hand, somewhere along the way your writing will betray you.

On the other hand, I still approach each book with the same basic plan in mind - to put some people under severe stress and see how they hold up.

Genocide is like a dessert. It is made of the flesh and bones of woman and children, it is sweetened with the blood of the innocent, and it is baked in the ovens of Auschwitz. There were truths to be learnt and there was wisdom to be gained... but there was a price to to be paid as well. You could not brush up against the future and escape unscathed. You could not see into the forbidden and avoid damage to your sight.

Hurt leads to bitterness, bitterness to anger, travel too far that road and the way is lost.

Fiction writers are strange beasts. They are, like all writers, observers first and foremost. Everything that happens to and around them is potential material for a story, and they look at it that way.

We live out our lives as we are meant to live them-with some choice, with some chance, but mostly as a result of the persons we are.