I think about stories and their logic and wonder if there can be any such thing as simply “there is a book.

Not all events are stories.

People make events into stories. Stories give events meaning.

…’being published’ is not the same as being a real writer.

Patrick opens his arms about three feet wide and, with one finger pointing up on each hand, tries to show the scope of this thing. I notice that he doesn’t look at his hands as...

Most people would look at an animal in a cage and instinctively feel that it should be set free. . . . It’s a dangerous world out there, filled with predators. . . . What...

What folly takes light through ether to each eye from every horizon.

In real life nothing means anything. Stuff happens and there just is no structure.

If something wants to be a story, it will be.

Routine kills creative thought.

Sometimes I like to think I live with ghosts. Not from my past, but wispy bits of ideas and books that hang in the air like silk puppets. Sometimes I think I see my own...

Sometimes you have to trust grownups, perhaps more so when they are not there to actually supervise you.

Sometimes I wake up with such an immense sense of disappointment that I can hardly breathe.

Homeopaths argue that water has a memory.

But I quite like the way you can talk about science without necessarily using mathematics, but using metaphors instead.

Real life is physical. Give me books instead. Give me the invisibility of the contents of books, the thoughts, the ideas, the images. Let me become part of a book. . . . an intertextual...

One minute I was playing chess and doing maths all the time, the next I had been rerouted into more ‘normal’ girls’ activities: reading, writing stories and worrying about my clothes.

I always got a bit pissed off with those broadsheet sceptics who make their living being passionately angry about homeopathy, God, synchronicity or whatever, because it’s as if they can’t get past their emotions, and...

Some writers, notably Anton Chekov, argue that all characters must be admirable, because once we’ve looked at anyone deeply enough and understood their motivation we must identify with them rather than judge them.