“I wanted to write at school - to write funny stories which the teacher might ask me to read out to the class. It's all basically about showing off.”

“The day a character becomes predictable is the day a writer should think about moving on - because the reader certainly will.”

“I believe that if writers want their readers to care about a character, they have to care themselves. I have to root for a detective who screws up as much as Thorne does, who shares my birthday, my...”

“We didn't have all the distractions that young people have today. We didn't have these incredible computer games and social networks to engage with. I understand that. But once young readers do dis...”

“My dad was a terrible father. Dreadful. But he had a very difficult childhood. He was fostered - he never knew who his father was. So he had a very different attitude to family and kids. I don't ha...”

“London was a city of ghosts, some deader than others. Thorne knew that in this respect, it wasn't unlike any other major city - New York or Paris or Sydney - but he felt instinctively that London w...”

“It was the truth, and like any truth, it was powerful.”

“Their Silver war is being paid for in Red blood.”

“We've already been killed, all of us. It happened so long ago, we've forgotten it.”

“nights and days came and passedand summer and winterand the sun and the windand the rain.and it was good to be a little islanda part of the worldand a world of its ownall surrounded by the bright b...”

“When you drop a glass or a plate to the ground it makes a loud crashing sound. When a window shatters a table leg breaks or when a picture falls off the wall it makes a noise. But as for your heart...”

“A good friend of mine once said, "I have never met a bigot who was a reader as a child.”

“I think it's going to be a very important, unique data set in terms of measuring the behavior of your lower body in space and trying to figure out what we can do to preserve bone and muscle density.”

“Biology is the science. Evolution is the concept that makes biology unique.”

“As a unique person, I was bullied badly as a teen.”