 We make choices but are constantly foiled by happenstance. |
| The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some new approach, an alternative way of telling a story and manipulating characters; the novel is such a wonderfully flexible form. |
| Getting to know someone else involves curiosity about where they have come from, who they are. |
| The Photograph is concerned with the power that the past has to interfere with the present: the time bomb in the cupboard. |
| I'm now an agnostic but I grew up on the King James version, which I'm eternally grateful for. |
| It was a combination of an intense interest in children's literature, which I've always had, and the feeling that I'd just have a go and see if I could do it. |
| We all need a past - that's where our sense of identity comes from. |
| I have had to empty two family homes during the last few years - first, the house that had been my grandmother's since 1923, and then my own country home, which we had lived in for over twenty years. |
| I'm intrigued by the way in which physical appearance can often direct a person's life; things happen differently for a beautiful woman than for a plain one. |
| I didn't think I had anything particular to say, but I thought I might have something to say to children. |
| I didn't write anything until I was well over 30. |
| Every novel generates its own climate, when you get going. |
