“How quickly a person in pain whom you can’t help becomes a reproach. And then, no doubt, a thorn.”

I became a writer because I love to read, yet I never get to unless I’m reviewing a book or doing research.

Well. I don’t suppose you have to believe in ghosts to know that we are all haunted, all of us, by things we can see and feel and guess at, and many more things that we can’t.

I’ve found in the past that the more closely I identify with the heroine, the less completely she emerges as a person.

So from the first novel I’ve been learning techniques to distance myself from the characters so that they are not me and I don’t try to protect them in ways that aren’t good for the story.

If you’re going to spend two or three years immersed in a subject, you better be deeply interested in it, or it won’t be interesting to the reader.

The believer is happy. The doubter is wise.

When in doubt, we follow our hearts. Words can be false, images and sounds can be manipulated. But this – He tapped his chest, over his heart. ‘This is always true.

I don’t wish to be without my brains, tho’ they doubtless interfere with a blind faith which would be very comfortable.

I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don’t believe I deserved my friends.

Don’t ever doubt yourselves or waste a second of your life. It’s too short, and you’re too special.

Being logical gave me a reason to doubt.

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

I know it when I don’t know it. Sometimes I know it when I don’t think I know it. I need to trust myself in these moments, these rare moments of self-doubt.