But I rather thought--I mean, I heard you'd killed Balder the Fair." "I never did," snapped Loki crossly. "Well, no one ever proved I did. What happened to the presumption of innocence? Besides, he was supposed to be invulnerable. Was it my fault that he wasn't?
Our lives are like these things I make. Turn 'em, build 'em, bake 'em in fire. That's what you've been, son. Baked and fired. But a pot don't have the right to choose whether he be for water, wine, or just left empty. You have, son. You have.
I dream a lot, in colour and in sound and scent. Quite a few of my stories have come from dreams.
I'm phobic about the idea of being constrained.
I think everybody has a secret life.
Was it my fault that I got out of hand? --Loki
Online communities are an expression of loneliness.
I don't think I've ever had a mentor. The closest thing is my friend Christopher Fowler, another writer. Chris kept me sane for a long time before I made it.
Of course I didn't pioneer the use of food in fiction: it has been a standard literary device since Chaucer and Rabelais, who used food wonderfully as a metaphor for sensuality.
A thing named is a thing tamed.
I speak as I must and cannot be silent.
I've nothing against kids reading anything they please, but I do have a problem with pink books for girls and black books for boys.
A man may plant a tree for a number of reasons. Perhaps he likes trees. Perhaps he wants shelter. Or perhaps he knows that someday he may need the firewood.
Their love was something which coloured the air between them like sunlight.
Children are knives, my mother once said. They don’t mean to, but they cut. And yet we cling to them, don’t we, we clasp them until the blood flows.
Places do not lose their identity, however far one travels. It is the heart that begins to erode over time. The face in the hotel mirror seems blurred some mornings, as if by too many casual looks. By ten the sheets will be laundered, the carpet swept. The names on the hotel registers change as we pass. We leave no trace as we pass on. Ghostlike, we cast no shadow.
Like a domestic cat, purring on the sofa by day, but by night, a strutting queen, a natural killer, disdainful of her other life.
The process of writing is a little like madness, a kind of possession not altogether benign.
My heroes and heroines are often unlikely people who are dragged into situations without meaning to become involved, or people with a past that has never quite left them. They are often isolated, introspective people, often confrontational or anarchic in some way, often damaged or secretly unhappy or incomplete.
As authors, we all expect criticism from time to time, and we all have our ways of coping with unfriendly reviews.
Before you have children, you mostly think about the world in terms of yourself. And when you become a parent, the focus shifts to somebody else.
From a very young age my mother persuaded me that I could write for fun, but I had to have a proper job - very good advice.
I am not at all a chocoholic. I would rather eat anchovy toast.
I can write absolutely anywhere. All I need is a laptop.
I don't listen to music when I'm writing, but I often do when I'm reworking, editing or when I need to relax.
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