I've never written poetry. I'm not a poet, but I think the nearest you get is either the short story or the novella, in that you can't waste a word. There is no hiding place: everything's got to be seen to relate, and the prose counts.

Certainly with a book, people are going to be able to read it and give themselves permission to have that delicious feeling of being terrified because they're in a safe place while they're reading. That's what you can rely on as a writer, that people can let themselves be really frightened because they're really all right.

Yorkshire is so much part of me.

The New Testament is about loving other people as you love yourself. That means caring for them and looking after them and being kind to them.

I still don't know how to jump-start a car, even though it's been told to me a million times. But I do love thinking about how creativity works.

The one thing they didn't tell you at Iowa is how hard it is to make a living writing fiction and poetry.

I just love performing so much, and I threw myself into every musical theater production that was going in my home town and at school. And then, I went to the National Youth Music Theatre, which was really a galvanizing experience for me when I was 17.

The theater is the only branch of art much cared for by people of wealth; like canasta, it does away with the brother of talk after dinner.