Somewhere, beyond blackness, some tyrant host swaps breathing for airlessness to test me. I had no concept of myself, no link to the things I knew. It is hard to explain the lack of anything...

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...

I used to love lulling, running water – a sound so infrequent in cityscapes. Its loss always made me feel lonely when I lived amongst concrete.

I’ve always thought that the best moments can come from the worst times.

It was all changing. All of it. And it was horrible and it was lovely.

Time is not an enemy as such, but a missing person, sending cryptic postcards from the past.

On some days she was able to see both sun and moon at the same time. Like feuding cousins, they hung in two corners of the vast world-ceiling refusing to look at one another. The...

Truth starts with a sense.

I suffered my own battles. I suffer still.

Grumman provided the excuse and Nader provided the pain.

At first, I didn’t understand. Understanding came very slowly.

her daughter”.

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...

I love to pull at people’s heart strings, but I’m no Nicholas Sparks.

The fear of silence is a fear everyone should overcome.

One day, I decided I was going to write books forever.

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

Youngsters deserve no opinions.

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...

The breeze around them seemed to drop – dead – like a door to the best things had just closed.

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...

Katie soon learned there was a problem with hope.

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.

He had become the sky around the sun – alive, but not really there.

A silence absorbed them both – a lack of sound so potent it blackened the place with something richer than hate.

To Katie, it was as lonely and secret as any building could be; its size and grandeur meant less to her. She didn’t know or care when the place had been built or by whom,...

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...

Katie quickly learned the best way is to see another world entirely.

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...

Our light will be their death.

Bea stared at the pencils as if they were enemies.

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

Pain is usually all on the surface, but this terror is internal; not just a hurt, but a new language of feeling.

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...

Isn’t she just Little Miss Sweetness and Light?” – and it was a statement that put him off proposing. It made him seriously reassess his options. He didn’t want to be with someone others saw...

Shush – it’s silent time again.

Katie began to draw in the secrecy of her room, in anger at first, using her mother’s pencils and whatever paper she could find. Sometimes, she had to steal from Nader’s study to replenish her...

When people say, ‘you’re so young to be a writer,’ I always reply, ‘I started young because I’ve got a lot to write.

The city is sore with movement, but still it oscillates. Busy people churn through grey-toned streets, their briefcases held close, rustling against trouser legs. The collective machine is tired, but each worker drives on. Gleaming...

Even the young can be warriors.

No trees, sky or ground. No other buildings or fields. No winding path, no brambles, no outhouse or pond or flowers, no sunshine or children playing. Just blackness.

Too old for dolls. Too ill for tablets.

My characters don’t always know more than the reader does, because my readers get the best seat in Paper House.

I do not do free e-books. I occasionally like to eat that thing you people call “food”.

Dwelling on the loneliness inherent in a city such as this when you dream of endless mountains and expanses of blue sky is a recipe for torment.

Prayer is better than pills.

Even though I knew, deep down, what she was trying to do, I couldn’t hate her. Even when she hurt me, I forgave her.

For no real reason – well, perhaps because of the seriousness under the trees or Nader’s hair, which was very messy and covered in little grass seeds – Katie began to giggle. She knew it...

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.

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?!)