Pirates have always fascinated me.

Genre categories are irrelevant. I dislike them, but I do not have the casting vote.

If they had said my writing wasn't good enough, fair enough, that's an opinion. But to say it's too complex is to insult the intelligence of the so-called young.

The other writer who had a very important early influence on me when I was about 17 was C.S. Lewis.

I think of myself as a storyteller, and that is it.

I just love writing. It's magical, it's somewhere else to go, it's somewhere much more dreadful, somewhere much more exciting. Somewhere I feel I belong, possibly more than in the so-called real world.

Pirates have always fascinated me.

I never know where I am going, though. That is part of what makes it so wonderful. And after all, who does?

Writers tell stories better, because they've had more practice, but everyone has a book in them. Yes, that old cliche.

Writing is writing, and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and non-fiction. And even there, who can be sure?

As a child, my mother told me lots of fairy stories, many her own invention. She, too, tended to reverse the norm.

It's very selfish when I write. I'm not aware, ever, of writing for another person; I'm not even really aware of writing for myself.

At an early school, when I was about 5, they asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. Everyone said silly things, and I said I wanted to be an actress. So that was what I wanted to be, but what I was, of course, was a writer.

I also love Disney, and will defend doing so, because there's so much in those films and I don't care if it's stereotyped.

I like writing about women, weak and strong, pathetic and heroic. I like writing about men, ditto. And all the variants of men and women, beasts and demons.

When I am fascinated by something, I like to play with it.

I'm writing what comes into my head, or through me, or from somewhere else, and it is the most extraordinary, exciting thing. I love it, and I'm very greedy, and I really enjoy it!

I submitted manuscripts to publishers. This was not so much a feeling that I should be published as a wish to escape the feared and hated drudgery of normal work.

I love writers all across the board, but one who influenced me very directly at the beginning was Mary Renault.

People are always the start for me... animals, when I can get into their heads, gods, supernatural beings, immortals, the dead... these are all people to me.

I like films, or some films, and would be intrigued to see my work on screen.

I've been criticised for writing in too complex a manner for younger people.

No one is ever ordinary.

It gets cold in the desert at night particularly up in the mountains the stars hammer on the rock and strike frost.

The guilty are always the most prone to establish complementary guilt and the most unforgiving thereafter.

No one asks a robot what he wants.

In the greater part of humankind there resides an instinct for survival. It is this which can clutch at straws and effect a rescue from them. It is this which can, now and then, outwit fate.

The worst vulgarity is to avoid vulgarity solely on the grounds that it is vulgar.

We're criminalizing economic inability to stay out of the system. Women get penalized more than men for the same crime; blacks get penalized more than whites for the same crime. We need to bring out more into the light, because it's not fair... I applaud Colin Kaepernick for speaking out.

I've got to make some decisions just like any other player that has ever played this game, that eventually the clock stops, their basketball clock stops.

The confidence came along as I played well.

Rail travel for me is the most relaxing, most scenic way to see the country.

For me, cooking is an extension of love.

A lot of the lyrical ideas do have a lot of meaning in a way, although it is somewhat abstracted.

I never cared what kind of grade I got.

Even if I went off to some other career, I hope I would still be doing Coen films.

Friendship may, and often does, grow into love, but love never subsides into friendship.

I don't go around calling myself a fat girl. It doesn't feel fun to me.

There is something fundamentally unfair about a government that takes away so much of people's money, power, and personal control while telling them that life will be better as a result.

I'm one win away from being a superstar.

Viewed narrowly, all life is universal hunger and an expression of energy associated with it.

I don't think I'm boring.

In the music industry, you meet some not very nice people, some very strange characters.

In order to work well, markets need a basic level of trust.

When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realise that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives.

All that really belongs to us is time; even he who has nothing else has that.

The person who can be only serious or only cheerful, is but half a man.

Every lethal terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11 has been carried out by an American citizen or a legal permanent resident, not by recent immigrants or by refugees. So tamping down immigration won't fix the real issue, which is 'homegrown' terrorism.

I couldn't think of anything worse than being in an unhappy marriage. It worries me because I've seen it destroy people.