Fear can give you urgent wings.

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.

But Tik Tok believes everything's circular, including men and women. He says nature seems to go around and around, and that we all have bits of everything.

If you know your present and future worth, it would be impossible to chase people who keep running away from you.

It is one of the great joys of home ownership to fire a pistol in one's own bedroom

Everything you have is to give. Thou art a phenomenon of philosophy and an unfortunate man.

He who tears down the cross, what is there left to lift him to heaven? The church claiming to be a Christian church is false to the title, if she make the cross of Christ of none effect.

Some people don't realize that a straight 'No' can be the kindest answer in the world.

Oh my god. I just hung around with an unpretty person. Excuse me while I go home to scrub myself with expensive body wash and a pink loofah, to rid myself of the unpretty germs.

Right. I’ve been missing Nutty McFang anyway.” “Stop making up names for him.” “What about Count Crackula?” “Just stop.

Too many heroes in my life. All gone.

Tutankhamun was not black, and the portrayal of ancient Egyptian civilization as black has no element of truth to it.