“Having a plan softened by spine into the mattress, quelled the rising simmer within me, setting me right in the same way that reading the first question of a dreaded exam or the first page of a new book set me right, those moments when wide-open uncertainty was, if not resolved, at least whittled into something more tangible and concrete.”

“Books help to form us. If you cut me open, you will find volume after volume, page after page, the contents of every one I have ever read, somehow transmuted and transformed into me. Alice in Wonderland. the Magic Faraway Tree. The Hound of the Baskervilles. The Book of Job. Bleak House. Wuthering Heights. The Complete Poems of W H Auden. The Tale of Mr Tod. Howard''s End. What a strange person I must be. But if the books I have read have helped to form me, then probably nobody else who ever lived has read exactly the same books, all the same books and only the same books as me. So just as my genes and the soul within me make me uniquely me, so I am the unique sum of the books I have read. I am my literary DNA.”

“The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read a book over I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.”

“I'm always on the lookout for new and interesting places to set my books. But as the characters come first, who they are will usually dictate where a book is set.”

“A cool breeze lifted the hem of my nightgown. The birds began to chirp and sing and the first sparks of sunlight brought the dew drops to life.... When my fingers touched the back door, something inside me shifted - I could actually feel it. I knew Mrs. Odell was right. I felt the flutter of a page turn deep within me as a chapter in my Life Book came to a close.”

“The first time I read an excellent work, it is to me just as if I gained a new friend; and when I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting of an old one.”