Zoë Marriott
Zoë has known that she wanted to be a writer since she read 'The Magic Faraway Tree' by Enid Blyton at age eight. She's never changed her mind in all the years since then.
She completed her first manuscript - a truly embarrassing romance novel - at age sixteen, and kept on writing books and submitting them until she had collected rejections from nearly very publisher in the UK and two in Australia. She eventually got her first publishing contract when she was twenty-two - but had to wait until she was twenty-four to see that book published (The Swan Kingdom). Her books have been longlisted for the Branford Boase Award, shortlisted for the Leeds Book Award and the Lancashire Book of the Year, and have won a Junior Library Guild Selection, a USBBY Outstanding International Listing, the Hillingdon Book Award and the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Prize. Over the years she's worked as an admin assistant, a dental nurse, a civil servant, and a reader for a literary scout. She has designed and run over one hundred creative writing workshops in schools and libraries, and from 2017-19 she was the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at York St. John University.
She lives in a little house in a town by the sea, with a manic spaniel called Ruskin (otherwise known as Demon Dog, Trash Puppy, Snaggletooth, or the supervillain in training) and far too many books. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at the Open University, and working on her first novel for adults.
“You see, that is why it is so easy to fool people with our illusions, Yue. In this world, illusions are usually much kinder than the truth.”
“I don't want you because I expect you to swoop in and rescue me and make everything all right.I don't want you because you're beautiful. None of that matters. you could never be a bad bargain to me, because...you're you.And I love you.”
“It's as if people -- normal people -- are made of silver. Shiny to start with, but tarnished by time, by ill-treatment. Luca... Luca is gold. Nothing in the world could ever make him shine less brightly.”
“All humans are made, in essence, of starstuff, and I sometimes wonder if the starstuff still calls out to us.”
“I’ve learned a lot about love over these last months. And part of what I’ve learned is that you have to want someone for who they are, not who you want them to be. You have to love a real person, not some dream in your head.”
“I know what evil looks like under the surface. No matter how beautiful the exterior, how good the lies, I don’t fool myself, not any more. You carry a terrible burden that no one – not even me – can really understand. But that doesn’t change who you are, Frost. You’re a good person. And I love you.” “I wish…” My voice cracked. “I wish I could believe in that.” Luca brushed the dishevelled strands of hair away from my face again and looked into my eyes. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll keep saying it until you do.”
“Trusting anyone can get you killed.”
“I thought then that you were the bravest girl I’d ever met, and nothing that’s happened since has changed my mind.”
“Your heart is beating so fast,” he said softly, the words barely more than a whisper. “I can feel your blood humming under my hand. Are you frightened of me?”
“Why does it hurt so much? Why does it have to hurt?”
“I would listen to her soft voice and wonder if, somewhere deep inside, she was screaming, too.”
“I truly believe that if you have more friends than books, you have too many friends. Or not enough books. Probably both.”
“Love comes like storm cloudsFleeing from the wind, and castsShadows on the moon.”
“It may seem strange to you, but there are no such creatures in Athazie. There is an animal-a very large animal-that lives on the plains and is much the same shape. We call it gadahama. The golden hunter. He does not say meep, meep as these tiny ones do. His voice is like this.' He drew in a deep breath, then let out a deafening roar. The cats fled in all directions at once as they scrambled away.”
“Our greatest warriors,' Terayama-san said, 'believe that they are already dead. They live as if their lives are over, and so fighting holds no terror for them.'A Suda-san looked gravely at him. 'That, Terayama-san, is one of the saddest things I have ever heard.”
“Better naked and alive than decent and dead, I thought.”
“No one knows me. Not anymore”
“People trust their eyes above all else - but most people see what they wish to see, or what they believe they should see; not what is really there”
“Aside from wanting to write cracking good books that turn children into lifelong readers, I really want to create stories that enable kids to LOOK at the world around them. To see it for what it is, with wide open, wondering eyes. Our mass media is so horribly skewed. It presents this idea of 'normalcy' which excludes and marginalises so many for an idea of commercial viability which is really nothing but blinkered prejudice. People who are black and Asian and Middle Eastern and Hispanic, people who are gay or transgendered or genderqueer, people who have disabilities, disfigurements or illnesses - all have this vision of a world which does not include them shoved down their throats almost 24-7, and they're told 'No one wants to see stories about people like you. Films and TV shows about people like you won't make money. Stories about straight, white, cisgendered, able-bodied people are universal and everyone likes them. You are small and useless and unattractive and you don't matter.'My worry is that this warped version of 'normal' eventually forms those very same blinkers on children's eyes, depriving them of their ability to see anyone who isn't the same as them, preventing them from developing the ability to empathise with and appreciate and take joy in the lives and experiences of people who are different from them. If Shadows on the Moon - or anything I write - causes a young person to look at their own life, or the life of another, and think, 'Maybe being different is cool' I will die a happy writer.-Guest blog - what diversity means to me”
“On my fourteenth birthday when the sakura was in full bloom, the men came to kill us.”
“My first memory is of the smell of sunwarmed earth.”
“I never knew my mother's name.”
“To ugly ducklings everywhere,Don't worry about those fluffy yellow morons:They'll never get to be swans”