'Several points from theatre still hang over my computer. What makes them want to come back from the bar after the interval?'

'Ultimately, Tomine strikes me as that rarest of things, a genuinely truthful writer, and I can think of no higher praise.'

'I'd have a go at anything, because my reading habit isn't so much about the book itself as where I read it.'

'I don't want someone's opinion, I want wisdom. Not the same thing at all. Opinion is everywhere.'

'Am I actually going to get out of bed and start work? Of course not, and yet I can't stop thinking about it because that's what creativity feels like.'

'As a child some of my happiest memories are of pretending to be ill, climbing into my parents' empty bed and devouring Puffins.'

'I have to be careful, he continued, turning to me with a smile, for I dabble in poisons a good deal.'

'It is irresponsible, his work seems to suggest, for the lyric poet to ignore what distracts him.'

'It's not just Nesbit's books that inspire me, she was also a neighbour. She lived just down the road from me,'

'The problem when you start writing seriously is that no one can really tell you how to do it.'