Believe me, It would be better if we didn't meet again. Go back to school. Go back to your life. And next time they ask you, say no. Killing is for grown-ups and you're still a child.
All that sadness. All that anger. It is the smoke that gets into your eyes. If you do not blow it away, how can you hope to see?
My father was aloof, very strange and very distant.
I don't think my father was a bad man, all in all.
Until he lost all his money, my father was a successful north London Jewish businessman. He was unusual among his immediate family in that he was enormously cultured and had an incredible library.
With every year that passes, I get further away from my target audience, and while I've been happy to think of myself as a father figure to these kids, I'd be a little distressed to be thought of as a grandfather figure.
Once you get into the world of dystopia, it's hard to avoid plagiarism, because other people have had such powerful visions.
Authors have odd relationships with their creations They owe their fame and fortune to their characters but feel enslaved by them.
I believe that, by and large, people are good and everybody you meet is more likely to surprise you in a positive way than in a negative way.
If you are going to be a writer, you have to have self-belief, every writer gets rejections, they say the difference between a successful and unsuccessful writer is an unsuccessful writer gives up, if you keep going you will succeed.
I enjoy scaring people.
There's something very strange about Sherlock Holmes, especially if you're an English schoolboy. When you read the stories, they stay with you forever.
I had three brilliant English teachers at secondary school. They found the writer in me.
A children's author on a soapbox is not a pleasant sight but I have become drawn into issues, slightly unwillingly, relating to young people, literacy and youth justice: just look at the number of young people we have locked up in prison, and the uselessness of it.
Writing about magic is harder than writing about spies because you're dealing with something that doesn't really exist.
Everywhere, publishers are being squeezed out.
I love the idea that magic and witchcraft and battles between supernatural creatures could be raging all around us but just out of our sight.
You like to think with young adults that with your books, a little part of it has reached them and will stay with them. It is great to be part of an eight-year-old's world.
