In our world of sleek flesh and collagen, Botox and liposuction, what we most fear is the dissolution of the body-mind, the death of the brain.

I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the Second World War.

I think that most of the children's writers live in the world that they've created, and their children are kind of phantoms that wander around the edge of it in the world, but actually the children's writers are the children.

The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.

I know that part of the reason I read Tolkien when I'm ill is that there is an almost total absence of sexuality in his world, which is restful.

You can understand a lot about yourself by working out which fairytale you use to present your world to yourself in.