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'.

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

You're so calm and quiet, you never say. But there are things inside you. I see them sometimes, hiding in your eyes.

Don't write about what you know - write about what you're interested in. Don't write about yourself - you aren't as interesting as you think.

I had walked along that street all my life, but had never been so aware that my back was to my home

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.

We say very little, for we do not need to. We are silent together, each in her own world, knowing the other is just at her back.