I Was On The Verge Of Something

Time Was A Thief, He Stole Your Life Away From You And The Only Way You Could Get It Back Was To Outwit Him And Snatch It Right Back.

Julia's Vocabulary Was "chock-full" Of Strangely Archaic Words - "spiffing," "crumbs," "jeepers" - That Seemed To Have Originated In Some Prewar Girls' Annual Rather Than In Julia's Own Life. For Jackson, Words Were Functional, They Helped You Get To Places And Explain Things. For Julia, They Were Freighted With Inexplicable Emotion.

Why Do Cats Sleep So Much? Perhaps They've Been Trusted With Some Major Cosmic Task, An Essential Law Of Physics - Such As: If There Are Less Than Five Million Cats Sleeping At Any One Time The World Will Stop Spinning.

I Can't Imagine What It Would Be Like To Write In A Relaxed State. I'm Going To Be Writing Some Stories For My Own Interest. I Want To Experiment With Different Things And See If I Can Approach Writing With Much Less Control And In A Better Psychological State. It Will Be Like Breaking Out Of A Straitjacket.

I Had A Novel In The Back Of My Mind When I Won An Ian St James Story Competition In 1993. At The Award Ceremony An Agent Asked Me If I Was Writing A Novel. I Showed Her Four Or Five Chapters Of What Would Become 'behind The Scenes At The Museum' And To My Surprise She Auctioned Them Off.