I would say that, apart from being a writer, I have also always been very conscious of the idea of a 'world elsewhere'.

I grew up with tarot cards and the reading of tea leaves.

My favourite tea is lapsang souchong.

I'm more a dog person than a cat person.

I grew up in North Devon, by the sea, and feel a special affinity for the landscape there, despite a lack of actual ancestry.

I was born in the seventies, age of bad haircuts and grainy colour photos.

I've never been baptised.

[My muse] is, in fact, a woman of the world, and precisely because of this, hopes that a diversity of cultures will endure, and that one bland monoculture does not swamp everything.

If we do want to do that [ colonise space to survive, ], then vacuous materialism is not going to be enough for us.

If we do overcome linear time, I would hope this means dwelling more directly in the fertility of the imagination rather than denying it, as some aspects of Buddhism seem to.

Some Buddhists, however, never seem to get past the void, and I suppose I view this as a kind of Buddhist 'Old Testament' that I don't especially like.

Gold is the corpse of value...

Know that you are enough, so that if a person tries to make you feel beneath them, you'll have the courage to walk away.

If you play it safe in life, you've decided that you don't want to grow anymore.

Know or listen to those who know.

Low oil prices played a part in a major move by Congress voting to end the 40-year-old ban on exporting American crude oil.

I started realising that the themes running through all of my novels were really haunting and obsessing me about my own life.

I have noticed if I pull from fear or despair about the state of the world, I get tired, ineffective, afraid and sometimes mean-spirited.

In fact, Donald [Trump] was one of the people who rooted for the housing crisis.

When your ideas about yourself change, so does your experience.

Heaven, on occasion, half opens its arms to us; and that is the great moment.