You should write, write, write every day, and learn to edit and pare it right back so you're proud of every sentence, and each one is either being useful or beautiful, but hopefully both.

I loved Riot Grrl. Not only was it a punk rock revolution, but it meant you could get dressed for a night out for less than two pounds!

If you read all your history books, there are no women in them.

And every book, you find, has its own social group--friends of its own it wants to introduce you to, like a party in the library that need never, ever end.

I'm SO glad I spent 10 years being sad and lonely.

You don't need to be legendary all the time. You can just be legendary for 10 minutes a day.

If you come from a working-class background, you can't afford to write full time, because you're just not being paid. Basically, all my arguments come down to Marxist doctrine: The world is shaped by money, so the only voices you'll hear are the ones with money behind them. But thankfully, culture and cool are some things that circumvent money, because if you're cool, people will want to give you money - suddenly you shape the market and people start coming to you. Which is why culture has always been a traditional way out for working-class people.