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" In the odd moment when I am not thinking about horses, I write books. "

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" I'm constantly snatching my books out of the hands of precocious ten-year-olds who are simply too young to read them, despite parents insisting that dear Octavia has a reading age of 28. I remember trying to read 'In Cold Blood' at the age of twelve, and realising that just because you can read book doesn't mean you should. "

" When you read a book, the neurons in your brain fire overtime, deciding what the characters are wearing, how they're standing, and what it feels like the first time they kiss. No one shows you. The words make suggestions. Your brain paints the pictures. "

" I'd like to think life has improved since 1850, despite the long hours we all seem to spend slaving over hot computers, but the psychological journeys remain the same - the search for love, identity, a meaningful place in the world. "

" Writing's a great skill, but thinking's a better one. "

" I think the bravest thing to write about is nothing, just to write a book in which nothing happens. "

" When I was at university, there was such a strong delineation between city kids and those who had grown up the suburbs. City kids were so at home in the world, in a way that suburban kids take years to catch up, if indeed they ever can. "

" I have never written out of a desire to be controversial. "

" I've been fired five times for having a bad attitude. "

" Nowadays, I only review books I really like. It's cowardly, I know, but I figure it's not my job to make people unhappy. I'll leave that to the professionals. "

" As a person with the retentive mental capacity of a goldfish and a dislike of repetition, I frequently make use of the thesaurus built into my Microsoft Word U.K. Software. "

" Self-knowledge is essential not only to writing, but to doing almost anything really well. It allows you to work through from a deep place - from the deep, dark corners of your subconscious mind. "

" My daughter is a fantastic travelling companion - she's totally organised, whereas I'm hopeless. "

" I think most people struggle over a matter of years to find a satisfying way to live. "

" My husband is my most valuable resource. "

" The truth about love is that you don't always fall in love with whom you are supposed to fall in love with. Love just hits you. It is a transcendent thing. Sometimes it is your best friend's husband and sometimes it's your father. It's weird. But that's a fact of life. "

" While working in advertising, I channelled my creative energy into elaborate escape fantasies: cake making, dog breeding, the Peace Corps. "

" My younger sister Debby had died of cancer, which started me writing - the sense of life being short. Cancer focuses your mind. "

" I'm not sure I can write about America for the same reason I'm not sure I can write about adults - I have no critical distance on either place. "

" I know from experience that careers do not always arise from a deep sense of destiny. "

" Teenagers are very dark, I think. That's all the goth and emo stuff. They're experiencing a lot of stuff that adults experience, but in a much more raw way. It's that extremity that I'm interested in, to be able to go down so far and come up so quickly. "

" The thing about adolescence is that you are emerging from a state of obscurity. You are coming out into the world from your family. Your family can seem normal because it is your family and all you know, but in fact it is a mess. "

" Life is absolutely horrific, leading up to absolute horror. "

" I, a late riser, fantasise about getting up every morning at 5 A.M. to fetch the horses in from the fields. "

" I always think plot is what you fall back on if you can't write, to keep things going. "

" I've spent most of my life trying to wear a persona that didn't quite fit and when I started writing books, it was like finally becoming the right person. "

" I am quite a cheerful, dark person. On the outside, I'm optimistic but I expect the worst to happen. "

" Like many other people of my generation, I don't think I ever really bothered to grow up. I wasn't ever really a proper teenager until I was about 19, and maybe I got a bit stuck there, because it seemed to go on and on. "

" The more you live, the better writer you are. "

" In my experience, adults rarely bother reading the reviews of children's books and almost never read the books themselves - particularly if they don't have children. "

" It's hard recommending books for kids, and a huge responsibility. If you get it wrong, they don't tell you they hate that particular book, they tell you they hate reading. "