“The only time I've ever learned anything from a review was when John Lanchester wrote a piece in the Guardian about my second novel, The Heather Blazing. He said that, together with the previous novel, it represented a diptych about the aftermath of Irish independence. I simply hadn't known that – and I loved the grandeur of the word "diptych."”

“A couple of times he called the second he'd finished reading a novel and just had to tell me about it, and I know it sounds hokey and librarianish to say so, but I just swooned when he did that.”

“I want to write a novel about Silence," he said; “the things people don’t say.”

“I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.”

“My novels are what is known as popular and sell very well, but I am not a critic’s favourite, indeed I am generally dismissed with a sneer as a bestseller and not reviewed at all.”

“When I first joined my local library, I read endlessly. I immediately headed for the fantasy section, fairy tales, you name it. As a teen-ager, I read every novel by Kenneth Roberts, who wrote historical novels about the Revolutionary War period. My mother used to read to me. Heidi was one of my childhood favorites.”

“I have come to understand something about novels," Tessa said.
"And what is that?"
"They are not true.”

“I never think about genre when I work. I've written fantasy, science fiction, supernatural fiction, and am now working on a suspense novel. Genres are mostly useful as a marketing tool, and to help booksellers known where to shelve a book.”

“If I could sum it up in 50 words, I wouldn't have needed to write a whole novel about it.”

“It no longer matters what song he is singing, or who wrote the words — ​they are all his words, his sentiments, they are chapters from the lyrical novel of his life.”