By the time ordinary life asserted itself once more, I would feel I had already lived for a while in some other lifetime, that I had even taken over someone else's life.

Every writer has to find their own way into writing.

People can say what they like about the eternal verities, love and truth and so on, but nothing's as eternal as the dishes.

New Zealand is the only country I know well enough to write about. It can sometimes lead to complications.

I don't want to die, really. I'm interested in what happens next, so I've got to keep on.

When you are reading, someone has done a lot of work on your behalf, someone has had ideas and has then written and corrected and improved them so that they can be shared.

Will you still love me when I'm a monster?

At this stage I am not involved with young adults as closely as many other writers. My children are grown up and my grandchildren are still quite young.

I've never actually been a fighter myself - fighting tires me out and I'm not an efficient fighter anyway - but I have certainly seen other people have great complicated goes at one another.

I hope I am not too repetitive. However, coming to terms with death is part of the general human situation.

If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing twice.

If the devil succeeds in separating you and isolating you from other Christians, then he can destroy you

If we don’t know who we are, we’ll never know how we ought to live.

Good food is healthy food. Food is supposed to sustain you so you can live better, not so you can eat more. Some people eat to live, and some people live to eat.

Nine out of ten Americans are actually monarchists at bottom. The fact is proved by their high suseptibility to political claims by president's sons and other relatives, usually nonentities.

Like most of us, I determined that I'd rather be a large part of the problem than a small part of the solution.

There is no way out of the experience except through it, because it is not really your experience at all but the baby's. Your body is the child's instrument of birth.

I always take the same perspective with each new adventure. I put myself in the position of being at the end of my life looking back. Then I ask myself if what I am doing is important to me.

[Politicians] - they'll give you everything you want to your face - and then, as you walk away, they'll shoot you in the back because it's fun to watch you die.

I've never looked ahead very much in my life. I've never had any grand plan from the outset. I had no burning ambition to do what I do

There are so many people who have lived and died before you. You will never have a new problem; you're not going to ever have a new problem. Somebody wrote the answer down in a book somewhere.