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

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" I can actually trace the moment I decided I couldn't be a doctor. It was in biology, they brought in these African crickets and we were supposed to dissect them - but there's no way I was touching those bugs. "

" My husband is my most valuable resource. "

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

" 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. "

" Your writing voice is the deepest possible reflection of who you are. The job of your voice is not to seduce or flatter or make well-shaped sentences. In your voice, your readers should be able to hear the contents of your mind, your heart, your soul. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" I lived in New York for 10 years, and every New Yorker sees a shrink. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Contrary to popular belief, editors and agents are gagging for good books. "

" I loved horses and horse books as a child. "

" Life doesn't go on forever, and you don't want to drop dead without ever having done what you wanted to do. "

" One of the more interesting things I've learnt since becoming a writer is that if you like the book, you'll generally like the person. It doesn't always work in reverse - there are huge numbers of lovely people out there writing not very good books. "