What art should be about,' they will say, 'is revealing exquisite and resonant truths about the human condition.' Well, to be honest - no, it shouldn’t. I mean, it can occasionally, if it wants to; but really, how many penetrating insights to human nature do you need in one lifetime? Two? Three? Once you’ve realised that no one else has a clue what they’re doing, either, and that love can be totally pointless, any further insights into human nature just start getting depressing really.

I just want Tina Fey to be my best friend. And Lena Dunham. And Oprah, too.

I think loads of women have this idea that their life is going to start at some point, once they've busted all these problems of being a woman, once we're thin and we're pretty and we've got all of our clothes and stuff, that's when our life will begin. And you meet people at 48 who are still thinking that, and 58.

We need to reclaim the word feminism. We need to reclaim the word feminism real bad.

Feminism has had exactly the same problem that "political correctness" has had: people keep using the phrase without really knowing what it means.

I love puffins. They are small, round gothic birds, and their babies are called pufflings.

I wrote my first book at eight, all of four pages. At 10, I did a 40-page story. At 12, I wrote two stage plays.