I'm a third done into a new book but sorry - I have a superstition about talking about it!

I plot the first 5 or 6 chapters quite minutely, and also the end. So I know where I am going but not how I'm going to get there, which gives characters the chance to develop organically, as happens in real life as you get to know a person.

I don't always set stories in villages, more often in towns. But always in smallish communities because the characters' actions are more visible there, and the dramatic tension is heightened.

I'm a third done into a new book but sorry - I have a superstition about talking about it!

Oddly my name has been no professional help at all! It seems to have made no difference. I admire him hugely, both for his benevolence and his enormous psychological perception.

I've experienced huge kindness here, a great welcome and some very generous reviews without the snide social edge I often suffer from at home. I'm not patronized here either, which I much appreciate!

You can't be too old to be a writer, but you can definitely be too young!

All TV can do is capture the spirit of a book because the medium is so utterly different. But I'm very grateful for the readers that Masterpiece Theatre has undoubtedly brought me.

I always love writing about children.

I am not a fan of the cupcake image. This idea that you can distract a girl with something frivolous like a cake or shoes or handbags, and she won't be a threat to men.

I am often criticised for being rather accessible.

I don't need to marry again. I've been married twice, and I love it when it works, but these days we live until we're 80 and marriages are jolly long.

I'm actually rather orderly, although the way that I write is not.

I'm an enormous fan of people who have had a lot of faith in themselves, and been on a tremendous journey.

I'm no lyrical stylist; you wouldn't pick me for a perfect sentence, and I certainly wouldn't describe my novels as intellectual.

My advice would be not to write until after 35. You need some experience, and for life to knock you about a bit. Growing up is so hard you probably won't have much emotion to spare anyway.

My view of an excellent novel was probably set in the golden age of fiction in the 19th century: narrative, character and voice are of equal importance.

Out of respect to writers, you have to read the book in the way in which the author visualised it going out into the world.

You can change yourself and you can change the situation but you absolutely cannot change other people. Only they can do that.

You can't help parts of yourself leaking into other characters.

You can't love a library of e-books. You can't furnish a room with e-books.

Superstition is the only religion of which base souls are capable of.

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.

They that are against superstition oftentimes run into it of the wrong side. If I wear all colors but black, then I am superstitious in not wearing black.

Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.

Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational - but how much does it cost you to knock on wood?

In the absence of evidence, superstition. It's a Middle Ages thing. That's my theory anyway.

This is indeed a clash of civilisations, not between Islam and Christendom but between reason and superstition.

I'm a third done into a new book but sorry - I have a superstition about talking about it!

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.

There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition.

A superstition which pretends to be scientific creates a much greater confusion of thought than one which contents itself with simple popular practices.

I have a superstition about saying too much about what I want to happen, just in case it all disappears, or someone else comes along and beats me to it.

Speculation is perfectly all right, but if you stay there you've only founded a superstition. If you test it, you've started a science.

The devil divides the world between atheism and superstition.

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.

My only feeling about superstition is that it's unlucky to be behind at the end of the game.

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

I had only one superstition. I made sure to touch all the bases when I hit a home run.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

If you do not accuse each other, God will not accuse you. If you have no accuser you will enter heaven. What many people call sin is not sin; I do many things to break down superstition, and I will break it down.

Ignorance and superstition ever bear a close and mathematical relation to each other.

Superstition is the poetry of life.

Superstition is the poison of the mind.

Thou ought to be nice, even to superstition, in keeping thy promises, and therefore equally cautious in making them.

The only foes that threaten America are the enemies at home, and these are ignorance, superstition and incompetence.

Young men of this class never do anything for themselves that they can get other people to do for them, and it is the infatuation, the devotion, the superstition of others that keeps them going. These others in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred are women.

The nations were awakened from the sleep of death, as the words of eternal life flowed from the Apostles' lips, - the temples of superstition were shut or destroyed, and churches were planted in every part of the civilized world.