I try not to identify too strongly with any of my characters. I like to stand back and see them objectively. I think this is why I often use boys instead of girls, just in case I get too close and lose the overall picture.

There's nothing like the peace of the countryside, the quiet and the lack of distraction. It helps you to focus your mind.

Inspiration comes from the world around me. I'm an inveterate eavesdropper.

I've read up on magic, and I think it sets you free, and it gives you hope. You can explore worlds you didn't know existed. It stretches your imagination, and I like my own imagination to be stretched and also the children I'm telling the story to. It gives you a sense of wonder.

Despite my career, so much of my life has been dictated by what I'm afraid of: fear that I am not talented. Fear that people will finally realize that I am a boring individual who doesn't have many ambitions beyond starting a family 'at a good time' in life.

As a child, I lived with being punier than other boys in class. The only consolation was my parents' empathy - they encouraged constant trips to the local drugstore for chocolate milk shakes to fatten me up. The shakes made me happy, but still, all through grammar school, other kids shoved me around.

All the time a person is a child he is both a child and learning to be a parent. After he becomes a parent he becomes predominantly a parent reliving childhood.

It's going to sound cheesy, but if I have family and friends I don't really care where I am.