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After 'Where the Wild Things Are,' I guess I felt more confident as a writer.

I enjoyed having a reputation as being wild, but these days I try not to worry about what people think in the privacy of their own brain or what they write in the bizarre publicity of their own newspapers, because all of those things are meaningless.

Writers have to be careful not to confuse personal attention with the attention that's going towards the book.

Out of respect to writers, you have to read the book in the way in which the author visualised it going out into the world.

I must be honest here; I don't think there's such a thing as 'unconventional' when it comes to YA. YA readers are the most open-minded in the literary world. They'll read anything.

I couldn't have been the novelist I was without being the journalist I was.

Also, most people read fiction as an escape - and I wonder whether my books aren't a bit too grounded in reality to reach the widest possible audience.

I had to do the book because there was an unauthorised biography which didn't tell it like it was.

I think that part of being a good journalist, part of being an awake member of the world you're in, is to view yourself as an outsider, and I always have, to some degree.