I enjoy scaring people.

A children's author on a soapbox is not a pleasant sight but I have become drawn into issues, slightly unwillingly, relating to young people, literacy and youth justice: just look at the number of young people we have locked up in prison, and the uselessness of it.

Once you get into the world of dystopia, it's hard to avoid plagiarism, because other people have had such powerful visions.

I believe that, by and large, people are good and everybody you meet is more likely to surprise you in a positive way than in a negative way.

If you are going to be a writer, you have to have self-belief, every writer gets rejections, they say the difference between a successful and unsuccessful writer is an unsuccessful writer gives up, if you keep going you will succeed.

But then, he thought, most politicians are small and shabby, the sort of people who have been bullied at school.

That's why they become politicians.