Ghost stories ... tell us about things that lie hidden within all of us, and which lurk outside all around us.

For I see that then I was still all in a state of innocence, but that innocence, once lost, is lost forever.

I have sat here at my desk, day after day, night after night, a blank sheet of paper before me, unable to lift my pen, trembling and weeping too.

I had not yet learned that we make our own destiny, it springs from within us. It is not the outward events but what we allow ourselves to make of them that count.

I'm really quite hard to scare so it was about mining times when I have jumped, and what creeps me out.

Some people make tunes, but it is lines that run like moving messages through my head. Whatever else I am saying and doing often has no bearing on this inner, verbal life.

The key word for my book The Woman in Black is unsettling... because you're not terrified all of the time or even frightened, but you're unsettled and once you're unsettled, then the door's open.

I like going into a school matinee. I like to be behind the stage because there's a spy-hole and what you see is the best moment in all theatre.

A book which is left on a shelf is a dead thing but it is also a chrysalis, an inanimate object packed with the potential to burst into new life.

I collect Victorian automata and coming across them in the dark does give you a little shudder.

I had changed, and gone on changing, but I did not fully remember how it had begun, or understand why.

Don’t go in the opposite direction, locate your calling

Religion is the sense of comprehension of the totality of existence.

Not all meanings are meant to be clear at once. Some ideas take time. Some words are designed to lead us on inner journeys, with truth hidden deep inside them.

One thing I hear from fans is, 'My Dad's got one foot in the grave, and he wants to see the Pirates win ' I've heard that more than anything. That's our goal.

Our ministry is debt free and we have not had to beg or plead for finances.

It was never really my choice to be an action heroine.

I don't call myself a political figure but I'm taken to be.

Come on, man.... Hemingway, Sexton, Plath, Woolf. You can't kill yourself before you're even published.

There is a real danger that computers will develop intelligence and take over.

Desire attained is not desire, But as the cinders of the fire.