Every writer has to find their own way into writing.

People can say what they like about the eternal verities, love and truth and so on, but nothing's as eternal as the dishes.

New Zealand is the only country I know well enough to write about. It can sometimes lead to complications.

I don't want to die, really. I'm interested in what happens next, so I've got to keep on.

When you are reading, someone has done a lot of work on your behalf, someone has had ideas and has then written and corrected and improved them so that they can be shared.

By the time ordinary life asserted itself once more, I would feel I had already lived for a while in some other lifetime, that I had even taken over someone else's life.

Will you still love me when I'm a monster?

At this stage I am not involved with young adults as closely as many other writers. My children are grown up and my grandchildren are still quite young.

I've never actually been a fighter myself - fighting tires me out and I'm not an efficient fighter anyway - but I have certainly seen other people have great complicated goes at one another.

I hope I am not too repetitive. However, coming to terms with death is part of the general human situation.

If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing twice.

Embarrassing facts, those would really help our children remember their classroom lessons better.

I am that person in front of whom the most difficult conditions of life are lost.

Nothing can survive on the planet unless it is a cooperative part of larger global life.

The power of the resurrection means that nothing but the tomb is meant to be empty.

You're so square, baby, I don't care.

Trousers and the reputation of not being a thief are similar in the following way: There is no particular honor in having them butonce they are lost, everyone thinks they have the right to insult us.

I would run through brick walls for Spurs.

I think I've chosen the right path.

There is more going on beneath the surface than we think, and more going on in little, finite moments of time than we would guess.

If thou hast never been a fool, be sure thou wilt never be a wise man.