In the dark, neglected gutter running the length of a nearby secluded side street lies a small, lifeless bird. This is the blackcap – the unaccustomed northern nightingale – a creature with a charcoal greyness...

Motivation is my problem: I’m almost too motivated. I lie awake thinking how Kris would dress for the occasion or why Benjamin would be upset in the field or how the hell Brianna will manage...

Shame comes in different doses.

Kalist likes to listen to the collective voices swell as more individuals in his colony arrive.

I lose it when I can’t write. I feel sad and confused and fucked off.

All the best writers take risks, offend people often and say fuck you to the critics.

So much of what we read nowadays is there one moment and gone the next. When you read something good, cherish it.

Nader refused to bring her the feathery dream catcher – her asabikeshiinh – with its willow-web and invisible ‘lady spider’ apparently weaving her spells – an object Bea insisted always hung above her in bed.

Obelmäker always suspected Kalist of being a driven man with a determined selfishness that verged on sociopathic, but he actually appears to be suffering for once, in a humane way, like one who has been...

Most people assume I write at night because of the kind of books I write, but I can shut out the light with my mind.

I’m much more than a writer – I’m someone who puts different words together in an interesting way.

I need a new trick if I am to walk without legs, see without eyes or speak without words.

I have a very addictive personality. If it isn’t women, it’s money. If it isn’t money, it’s speeding. And if it isn’t speeding, it’s women. I also like expensive video consoles where I can punch,...

We are all the sum of a million moments in our lives.

Every time I so much as blink you get an erection.

Disorder, disobedience & rule breaking are features of all my stories.

Ever been expecting guests for a dinner party & had to clear up a massive LEGO space-station before they arrived? (Who needs kids to play?!)

He’s got things to do, places to be, realities to believe in. He can feel the phone he’s been told to keep switched off in this communication-free zone vibrating in his pocket and he thanks...

Writing is just building a new world – one character, one place, one maniac at a time.

Don’t mock my suggestions, Ridley – one day in the near future, they might just save your life.” Maxwell D. Kalist.

die Schwachen ein,” – the vulnerable one – after he cried like a child when he sliced two, thin strips of skin off his own index finger using a cheese grater (accidentally) one night when...

Someone asked me, ‘How do you write a book?’ I said, ‘I live with a pen in one hand.

Nearly two years of dates. Still no question. Her mother and father want to set a proper date. Still no question. Her friends keep asking, when, Natasha? When? But she still hasn’t been asked The...

I like to discover something new each day, to interpret the world in a way others might not, like a child might approach new experiences.

It was all death.

Are there not times, Ridley, when you yourself wish only to hear the best in people – and not to be dragged downwards into the underworld we all regularly inhabit?

He was breathing. That’s the first thing you always check for.

When I write, it feels like there are two little creatures that sit on each of my shoulders. One whispers, “You can do this. You’ve got what it takes.” The other sounds like my mother-in-law.

It’s unpleasant magic, the kind that darkens the senses, the kind no one wants to experience, but once in a lifetime might not be able to avoid.

Grumman provided the excuse and Nader provided the pain.

Our light will be their death.

His manhood sways briefly, then comes to a standstill.

If I don’t stay in and write, I feel like a prisoner.

People who don’t read fiction are scared of what’s inside their own heads.

I hate going back. I’d rather live at the bottom of my river of black, dragged this way and that by the forces that be, than go back there. Those forty-eight hours took twenty years...

Dawn cackles as she guides me through the all-glass porch. Thinner, paler Reina shuffles about behind Dawn, watching as I slip my boots off. Although she tries to hide her hands, her fingers flicker nervously....

Stop flirting,” he tells her, but he looks at her breasts and thinks, The girls with the bruises in the sex films are just dead dolls, but this pretty toy is alive.

Obelmäker is a deeply fearful person and terribly indecisive. Even when he makes a choice, it’s usually bad.

Every book contains a secret – even the writer doesn’t always know what it is.

So deep is the conflict, I believe I cannot breathe for all the doubt, guilt and sorrow my sister is pushing into me as her hand presses harder upon my sore breastplate and her fingers...

When I read a daring book or listen to rebellious music, I feel like I’ve found what freedom really means.

Beyond the boundaries of herself, her parents and the enclosing garden walls, were open fields and other waiting places she still knew nothing of – lies of the land, perhaps. What Katie did know is...

And don’t drop food.

Some ancient oversight had nearly taken his sight, but this sad fuck was already blind inside.

As a passionate writer, reader and fiction lover, I enjoy sharing recommendations and promoting the work of fellow authors.

Something Simon composed years ago is playing on someone else’s personal headphones; it’s a man sat opposite him in the waiting room. He believes the man is destroying his piece by reading a car magazine...

I’m endlessly fascinated by the way people interact, what they say to each other and how they respond to different situations.

Shush – it’s silent time again.

Baumauer secretly fears Kalist – and Kalist knows it.

I love judging people. It makes all my fears disappear and all the things I don’t like about myself seem so much less important.