I never think of myself as wise. I think of myself as possessing a critical intelligence which I intend to allow to operate.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

I used to make up stuff in my bio all the time that I used to be a professional ice-skater and stuff like that. I found it so inspirational. Why not make myself cooler than I am?

Heaven knows I've exposed myself in my novels through the use of fantasy and imagination... now my new book is about what really happened to me... not my heroines.

When I was on my own in a hotel room in Romania I had the imagination to keep myself occupied.

We didn't have television until I was about eight years old so it was either the movies or radio. A lot of radio drama. That was our television you know. We had to use our imagination. So it was really those two things and the comics that I immersed myself in as a child.

Just about this time when in imagination I was so great a warrior I had good use in real life for more strength as I was no longer taken to school by the nurse but instead had myself to protect my brother two years my junior.

I always wanted to ride a dragon myself so I decided to do this for a year in my imagination.

I still have a photo on my wall of the greatest idol I will ever have in my life and it's myself at eight. Because that's when the forces of imagination have the same value as the real world when they're an instrument of survival: when my mother disappeared and I imagined a mother. That was me at my best.

I would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call it imagination I suppose. But I was grateful for wherever they came from.