“Although it is pleasant to think about poison at any season, there is something special about Christmas, and I found myself grinning.”

I love that form very much because the reader is so familiar with all of the types of characters that are in there that they already identify with the book.

I was a very early reader, so I was really brought up being surrounded with piles of British books and British newspapers, British magazines. I developed a really great love of England.

Except I’m aware that as a writer you can’t get away with as much writing for children as you can with adults.

To be most effective, flattery is always best applied with a trowel.

Then when the fugitive word was least expecting it I would suddenly turn the full blaze of my attention back onto it catching the culprit in the beam of my mental torch before it could sneak off again into the darkness.

One of the marks of a truly great mind, I had discovered, is the ability to feign stupidity on demand.

Whenever I’m with other people, part of me shrinks a little. Only when I am alone can I fully enjoy my own company.

To be frivolous time-wasters, delighted in putting her favorite volumes into her grandchildren’s hands.

I always knew that I wanted to work on my own material – something that would be more long-lasting than short-lived electronic transmissions.

I had long ago discovered that when a word or formula refused to come to mind the best thing for it was to think of something else: tigers for instance or oatmeal.

And I had long ago become accustomed to being called ‘Ophelia Daphne Flavia, damn it.

It is not unknown for fathers with a brace of daughters to reel off their names in order of birth when summoning the youngest.

I was an early reader, and my grandmother, who as a child had been forbidden to read by a father who believed books.

I’m at that age where I watch such things with two minds.

My grandmother flew only once in her life, and that was the day she and her new husband ascended into the skies of Victorian London in the wicker basket of a hot-air balloon.

Compared with my life Cinderella was a spoiled brat.