For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.

It was so naive to think that there was nothing interesting that happened after 55. Come on, there's a whole second adulthood!

There's always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it's with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it's one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again.

When you write your first book aged 25 or so, you have 25 years of experience, albeit much of it juvenile experience. The second book comes after an extra year sitting in bookshops. Pretty soon, you begin to run on empty.

Nothing we wanted to happen happened. They were a very good team. I think we were just overpowered and overmatched.

We just cannot continue to have these things happen.