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

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" Every relationship has its own language. It takes a long time to evolve and read one another. Just as it's true for people, it's also true on a national or cultural level. "

" People like to say that East Asians in general, and Japanese in particular, are not very expressive: there's that term 'inscrutable.' But often, Europeans just don't get the Asian codes. Believe me, the message is being expressed OK. "

" '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? "

" It's true that stammerers can become more adept at sentence construction. "

" 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 think it's natural for youth to be drawn to newness: The world is still new for them. "

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

" I think we think in terms of stories. "

" I'm from a time and place where bigheadedness was a really savage crime, and you'd get cut down for it by your peers and parents. "

" I can't bear living in this huge beautiful world and not try to imitate it as best I can. "

" 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 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. "

" Japanese food makes me feel particularly good. "

" Your environment affects you wherever you are. "

" I think all writers of my age who are brought up on films probably by the age of 16 have seen many more films than they have read classics of literature. We can't help but be influenced by film. Film has got some great tricks that it's taught writers. "

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

" Perhaps all human interaction is about wanting and getting. "

" 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. "

" I don't have problems starting writing. I have problems stopping. I'm one of the last dads to arrive at school to collect the kids, because I want to get this paragraph just right. "

" False modesty can be worse than arrogance. "

" Many children are natural fantasists, I think, perhaps because their imaginations have yet to be clobbered into submission by experience. "

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

" 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. "

" When I think about it, I'm happily bewildered that people will preorder my books They'll preorder me. What a lucky guy! "

" There's a disease that young writers are susceptible to, which is, I will do this because I can - hubris, I suppose - without stopping to work out why. "

" I think words operate like musical notes that the eyeball hears. "

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

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

" I had a happy childhood. "

Happy Childhood