“The water was lapping around my waist by the time Ivy and Gabriel found me. I was shivering, but I hardly noticed. I didn't move or speak, not even when Gabriel lifted me out of the water and carri...”

“We have a host of English teachers in the family. My mum is an English teacher, and so are my dad, my aunt and my uncle. I have grown up with family writing competitions, and I can't remember a bir...”

“I have a word quota I try to fulfill every day, and I try to do that in the morning and into the afternoon and then go out with friends at night. I love singing and have lessons and enjoy drama, an...”

“Imagination makes us aware of limitless possibilities. How many of us haven't pondered the concept of infinity or imagined the possibility of time travel? In one of her poems, Emily Bronte likens i...”

“I never thought about writing a novel until I was 13, and that happened by chance. I was on school holidays, and I was bored, and I thought I just wanted to do something to occupy myself instead of...”

“Childhood is just this amazing place, and in my books, I was trying to express my concern about childhood being eroded. You have kids' TV programs being interrupted by terrorist attacks, and kids a...”

“Dreaming is what you do when your eyes are closed...living is what you do with that dream once you open your eyes!”

“It happens like this. "One day you meet someone and for some inexplicable reason, you feel more connected to this stranger than anyone else--closer to them than your closest family. Perhaps this pe...”

“When you totally commit yourself to a project and do your work quietly and well, unknown friends will find you and angels will surround you.”

“Men who fear demons see demons everywhere.”

“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innume...”

“I suddenly realized. The zebra. It is not something outside of us. The zebra is something inside of us. Our fears. Our own self-destructive nature. The zebra is the worst part of us when we are fac...”

“Humans would never tell the simple truth when a lie was available....”

“I refuse to believe that gods want to make mortals unhappy and torment them. That's what humans do. And humans are very definitely not divine.”

“The water was lapping around my waist by the time Ivy and Gabriel found me. I was shivering, but I hardly noticed. I didn't move or speak, not even when Gabriel lifted me out of the water and carri...”