Quotes from Michelle Paver

For me, inspiration isn't a sort of spark which lights the fire of the story. It's more like a thread, one of many, which you can tease out of a story once it's written, if you feel so inclined.

In a ghost story, usually you've got to hang on until daylight, and you'll be alright. But if daylight's four months away, then you have a problem.

I've climbed Stromboli when it's erupting, which is quite a heavy climb: three hours with a helmet to get to the top. When you're there, and it's dark, and you can see this eruption and feel it, it's quite different to watching it on TV.

I'm not the next J. K. Rowling. We've got one already. It's flattering to be compared to her. I like her books and loved the first three particularly, but apart from the fact that they've got young boys as heroes, they're very different.

I sometimes wonder why I do so much research - I look at other successful writers, and I think it must just be so relaxing to write about flying horses or something, but I have to make it plausible.

I want to make the world real. I have to be able to believe that it could happen. I can't put Pegasus in my stories because horses can't fly. It's just a quirk in my brain.

I would love to live in the wilds of nowhere, and when writing 'Chronicles,' I would occasionally rent a cottage in the middle of nowhere that had no mobile reception, but I'm not about to move away from my family.

It's the little details I love. How to fletch your arrows with owl feathers, because owls fly silently, so maybe your arrows will, too. How to carry fire in a piece of smouldering fungus wrapped in birchbark. These are the things which help a world come alive.

I'm quite happy trekking around Greenland on my own, but those big book tours in America or the Far East are the only time I ever really feel lonely.

People often ask writers where they get their inspiration, and for me, the short answer is that I haven't a clue; I'm just grateful that I get them.

I talk to children in schools all over the world, and I've found that both boys and girls are fascinated by how hunter-gatherers manage to survive entirely on what's around them in their environment: trees, rocks, animals and plants.

I could be less impatient with people. I sometimes judge by impressions.

To experience the northern forest in the raw, I went to northern Finland and Lapland, travelling on horseback, and sleeping on reindeer skins in the traditional open-fronted Finnish laavu. I ate elk heart, reindeer and lingonberries, and tried out spruce resin: the chewing gum of the Stone Age.

Doing field trips rather than simply researching online allows me to experience the story from the point of view of my main character; you can't get that by sitting at a desk.

It's true to say that once I've got the bare bones of a story, I often get ideas from my own research trips to faraway places.

The most remote place I've been to was in Greenland. I remember setting out for a solo hike from a small cabin, itself several hours' boat ride from the nearest settlement.

Changing from biochemistry to law was easy because I was rubbish in the laboratory. I could never decide how much to put in a test tube because I'm not very good at maths.

There's this whole thing of being two people. You are the person you want to be - the writer - and then there's this weird other life of going on tour and talking about the writing. And that really is weird.

Writing is a mysterious process, and many ideas come from deep within the imagination, so it's very hard to say how characters come about. Mostly, they just happen.

I didn't do it for the money. I know a lot of people say that, but if I'd wanted to be rich, I'd have stayed working as a city lawyer. I gave that up eight years ago and took a massive drop in salary, and I didn't mind because I was doing what I loved. There's plenty of material for the other five books.

I live on my own, happily, and I've never wanted children, but it did occur to me one day that there's part of me in 'Torak' - he's a loner, I'm a loner - as there's part of me in 'Renn,' who's quite waspish. I think, in some senses, 'Torak' is the son I never had.

All stories come from the subconscious - which is why it doesn't make sense to over-plan.

Mostly, research is much more fun than the actual writing.

Even if you plan your book, the actual writing is unplanned.