From a very young age my mother persuaded me that I could write for fun, but I had to have a proper job – very good advice.
I am not at all a chocoholic. I would rather eat anchovy toast.
I can write absolutely anywhere. All I need is a laptop.
I don’t listen to music when I’m writing, but I often do when I’m reworking, editing or when I need to relax.
Remember, it’s the winners write the history books, and the losers get the leavings.
A few hundred years ago there were no differences between magic and medicine.
The process of writing is a little like madness, a kind of possession not altogether benign.
It isn’t just a village. The houses aren’t just places to live. Everything belongs to everybody. Everyone belongs to everyone else. Even a single person can make a difference.
It’s a feeling which tells me that any woman can be beautiful in the eyes of a man who loves her.
Like a domestic cat, purring on the sofa by day, but by night, a strutting queen, a natural killer, disdainful of her other life.
Love not often, but forever.
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
I like autumn. The drama of it; the golden lion roaring through the back door of the year, shaking its mane of leaves. A dangerous time; of violent rages and deceptive calm, of fireworks in the pockets and conkers in the fist.
Children are knives, my mother once said. They don’t mean to, but they cut. And yet we cling to them, don’t we, we clasp them until the blood flows.
Everything comes home, my mother used to say; every word spoken, every shadow cast, every footprint in the sand. It can’t be helped; it’s part of what makes us who we are.
We came in the wind of the carnival. A wind of change, or promises. The merry wind, the magical wind, making March hares of everyone, tumbling blossoms and coat-tails and hats; rushing towards summer in a frenzy of exuberance.
I speak as I must and cannot be silent.
The process of giving is without limits.
Sheep are not the docile, pleasant creatures of the pastoral idyll. Any countryman will tell you that. They are sly, occasionally vicious, pathologically stupid. The lenient shepherd may find his flock unruly, definant. I cannot afford to be lenient.
A spider brings good luck before midnight and bad luck after.
I’d rather be a freak than a clone.