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" My books are anti-absolutist and deeply distrustful of any religious stance that precludes the validity of any other. "

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" When I was about 14, in about 1984, I decided to become a great poet. Faber & Faber was going to publish me, and when Ted Hughes read my first anthology he would invite me to Yorkshire for meat pies and mentorship. "

" I'm not a great deep political thinker. "

" I think we think in terms of stories. "

" I often lose myself in the Sudoku-like challenges of making a book work. "

" Historically, unfortunately, race seems to be the major division that humanity has imposed on itself, a way of subdividing into smaller groups. "

" Writing is probably one-fifth coming up with the stuff, and four-fifths self-editing again and again and again. "

" In the 1970s and 1980s there was so little decent fiction for young people, but we're now in a golden age that shows no sign of fading. Philip Pullman, J. K. Rowling, Lemony Snicket are only three of the best known among a good number of equals. "

" When you're out of your own cultural context you have conversations with yourself that you just don't have at any other point in your life. When you're in a hotel room on the border between India and Nepal you can really discover things about yourself. "

" I'm certainly a plot and character man. Themes, structure, style - they're valid components of a novel and you can't complete the book without them. But I think what propels me as a reader is plot and character. "

" Sometimes I think that creativity is a matter of seeing, or stumbling over, unobvious similarities between things - like composing a fresh metaphor, but on a more complex scale. "

" Sometimes, comics will make the observation that it's not jokes that are funny, it's characters that are funny. And isn't that true! That's why I always kill jokes. I'm terrible at them, because I get the joke right, but I can't get the character right, and it just goes down like a lead balloon. "

" False modesty can be worse than arrogance. "

" For me, novels coalesce into being, rather than arrive fully formed. "

" 'Y' is about the weakest letter of all. 'Y' can't make up its mind if it's a vowel or a consonant, can it? "

" I rarely ever put my head above the rampart and see where this big lumbering behemoth called 'global literature' is going. "

" Writers are so used to books being optioned and then the movie never happens. "

" If the human condition were the periodic table, maybe love would be hydrogen at No. 1. Death would be helium at No. 2. Power, I reckon, would be where oxygen is. "

" I can write pretty much anywhere. "

" Loneliness is an integral part of travelling. I used to think it was the downside to travelling, but now I realise it is a necessary educative part of it to be embraced. "

" Write something every single day, even if it's just three lines. And it doesn't matter if it's any good - just write something every day. "

" As long as our civilisation keeps trundling along generally forwards, then there is the possibility of a future where ethnicity is merely an interesting badge, not a uniform you can't take off. "

" There's been very little writing about speech impediments, even though it's this huge psychological barrier. "

" You can't be a part-time Richard Dawkins. "

" The state of childhood resonates with life inside a fantasy novel. If you have no control over how you spend large chunks of your day, or are at the mercy of flawed giant beings, then the desire to bend the laws of the world by magic is strong and deep. "

" I'm not from a milieu where high-register language or philosophical ideas were welcome. "

" Your environment affects you wherever you are. "

" A life can get knocked into a new orbit by a car crash, a lottery win or just a bleary-eyed consultant giving bad news in a calm voice. "

" The art of the novelist is not unrelated to the illness of multiple personality disorder. It's a much milder form. But the better the book, the nearer to the padded cell you are. "

" I've become a less brave traveller since I became a dad, but in the past I was more foolhardy than brave. "

" I'm a novelist, that's how I make my livelihood, and I concentrate on the novels. "