 If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up. |
| I am atheist in a very religious mould. I'm always asking myself the big questions. Where did we come from? Is there a meaning to all of this? When I find myself in church, I edit the hymns as I sing them. |
| At 20, 25, 30, we begin to realise that the possibilities of escape are getting fewer. We have jobs, children, partners, debts. This is the part of us to which literary fiction speaks. |
| Many children's writers don't have children of their own. |
| Science and literature give me answers. And they ask me questions I will never be able to answer. |
| Most of my work consisted of crossing out. Crossing out was the secret of all good writing. |
| Every life is narrow. Our only escape is not to run away, but to learn to love the people we are and the world in which we find ourselves. |
| Most adults, unlike most children, understand the difference between a book that will hold them spellbound for a rainy Sunday afternoon and a book that will put them in touch with a part of themselves they didn't even know existed. |
| Use your imagination, and you'll see that even the most narrow, humdrum lives are infinite in scope if you examine them with enough care. |
| I've worked in television long enough to know that when you stop enjoying that type of thing you go home and do something else. |
| If you enjoy math and you write novels, it's very rare that you'll get a chance to put your math into a novel. I leapt at the chance. |
| Reading is a conversation. All books talk. But a good book listens as well. |
| I don't remember deciding to become a writer. You decide to become a dentist or a postman. For me, writing is like being gay. You finally admit that this is who you are, you come out and hope that no one runs away. |
| I think most writers feel like they're on the outside looking in much of the time. All of us feel, to a certain extent, alienated from the stuff going on around us. |
| From a good book, I want to be taken to the very edge. I want a glimpse into that outer darkness. |
| I better make the plot good. I wanted to make it grip people on the first page and have a big turning point in the middle, as there is, and construct the whole thing like a roller coaster ride. |
| Children simply don't make the distinction; a book is either good or bad. And some of the books they think are good are very, very bad indeed. |
