Children often have a much stronger concept of morality than adults.

I like writing for children. It seems to me that most people underestimate their understanding and the strength of their feelings and in my books for them I try to put this right.

I am not a victim. I am an angry survivor.

All writers are liars. They twist events to suit themselves. They make use of their own tragedies to make a better story... They are terrible people.

All writers are thieves; theft is a necessary tool of the trade.

One good reason for writing novels based on your life is that you have something to read in old age when you've forgotten what happened.

A writer's work may be a coded autobiography, but only a very close friend could decipher it.

People's lives are in the care of the railways when they get on a train. The railways should remember that.

I met Richard Burton, an RAF cadet on a two-term course. I would have flirted more enthusiastically if it had not been for the horrid boils on the back of his neck.

I like stirring the pot - I think it's part of my duty, to shake people up a bit - make them look at things in a different way.

I dislike the word 'victim.' I dislike being told that I 'lost' my husband - as if I had idly abandoned you by the side of the railway track like an unwanted pair of old shoes.

You're a monster. You'll go to hell.""Of course I will. Someone needs to take the throne.

Ideas are easy

Politics and ethics belong to different worlds.

I would have loved to have been a painter or a sculptor. I'm still fascinated by those things.

Logic might be unanswerable because it was so absolutely wrong.

Donald Trump's got to do some big changes, because what he was voted on. But when you think about how to do it, it would take massive expertise, which his people, believe me, do not have.

A chief petty officer taught me shorthand, which got me promoted to yeoman first class.

In the desert you celebrate nothing but water.

I do believe in monsters oddly enough. I think they're under my bed. But aliens are ridiculous; monsters I think are real completely though.

Girlfriends, indeed: the anti-video game.