I admired in others the strength that I lacked myself.

When I was a little boy I did not, of course, trouble much about my appearance.

The war imbued my tin soldiers with quite a new interest. It was impossible to have boxes enough of them.

I was not afraid of what I did not like. To overcome dislike of a thing often satisfied one's feeling of honour.

Music was something I was encouraged to do, which I appeared to be quite good at, but it was never a passion. Writing was always my first love.

I remember Tim telling me that he had an idea for a musical and he said to me that he was hoping that ABBA would be writing the music, which I thought was a pretty wild idea because they were obviously known very much as pop writers.

I would, however, start writing fiction about 10 years before I actually did, because it's such great fun to do, many times more creative than nonfiction.

I find Godzilla exciting because he/she/it comes from the sea. It's entirely plausible that it could be real. Yes it is! It doesn't take a huge stretch in the imagination to imagine that something may be living at the deepest depths of one of our oceans.