'In that shed I wrote like the wind, hitting my thousand words by midday so that I could get out there as soon as possible.'

'Some people teach with harshness, but she preferred to teach with love. I try to remember to treat myself the same way.'

'My rigid writing routines are based on the belief that the repetition of rituals itself is crucial to the writing process.'

'I don't know how many elements of Kwei-Armah's real life this play had in, but it made me think I could tell stories that I know and people would come to see them.'

'For me, the act of writing can be transformative; as a children's writer I'm suddenly allowed to imagine that postboxes are portals to other worlds.'

'I still borrow books from the library but I have fulfilled a childhood wish: I have shelves stuffed with books rescued from charity shops and second-hand bookshops.'

'I use writing to figure out where I fit in: where my responsibility begins and ends, and what shape it is.'

'At 17, you are Catholic-Boy's School shy of girls and drink; don't become a Donny-Juan.'

'Your idea hovers out of reach. It offers hope, and threatens despair; there's a story here, it whispers, but are you the one to tell it?'

'Those heaps of books in the living room left as if to mark my territory, with their scruffy bookmarks, torn up poetry drafts may, of course, be evidence of a project.'