You never know if you're a writer. You can't trust it. If you woke up and said, "I'm a writer," it would be gone. You wouldn't see anything for miles - even the dust would be running away.

Do you come to art to be comforted, or do you come to art to be re-skinned?

I don't want a tombstone. You could carve on it 'She never actually wanted a tombstone.'

Fashion is fickle, and I was published because I was fashionable. Because I was gay.

Nothing is harmful to literature except censorship, and that almost never stops literature going where it wants to go either, because literature has a way of surpassing everything that blocks it and growing stronger for the exercise.

But everything written has style. The list of ingredients on the side of a cornflakes box has style. And everything literary has literary style. And style is integral to a work. How something is told correlates with - more - makes what's being told. A story is its style.

We'd never expect to understand a piece of music on one listen, but we tend to believe we've read a book after reading it just once.