The sign of a masterpiece: A painting when there's a lack of resolution.

You know I don’t listen to market gossip,” she began, “but it is hard not to hear it when my daughter’s name is mentioned.

That's how fossil hunting is: It takes over, like a hunger, and nothing else matters but what you find. And even when you find it, you still start looking again the next minute, because there might be something even better waiting.

Over his shoulder I saw a star fall. It was me.

Younger women tend to be busier, wearing more layers and more make-up. I don't know if it's because older women are more confident, or just that we don't care any more. But that pared-down approach is the same with the sentences I write; I take out adjectives and adverbs and keep the description to a minimum.

I read a lot of fantasy. I adored 'Anne of Green Gables'. But my favourite books as a child were probably Laura Ingalls Wilder's 'Little House' series, about a pioneer family in the mid-19th-century American west. I often thought of them as I was writing 'The Last Runaway'.

I find that when I come out of the library I'm in what I call the library bliss of being totally taken away from the distractions of life.