Never love someone whom you think you need to mend – or who makes you feel like you should be mended. There are boys out there who look for shining girls; they will stand next to you and say quiet things in your ear that only you can hear and that will slowly drain the joy out of your heart. The books about vampires are true, baby. Drive a stake through their hearts and run away.

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

Heaven. The biggest waste of our time we ever invented, outside jigsaws.

I always give three pieces of advice to all the teenage girls when I do my talks: long country walks - it's important to get some fresh air in your lungs, and be in contact with your body; masturbation - it takes the edge off, it'll get you through; and the revolution - believing in changing the world.

The first thing to improve society is not banning abortion, but making sure that everyone who had a child is in the best position to be able to rear it.

I know people go on about Twitter, but it is amazing. It's whatever you want it to be, and all the women got in there before the boys.

When you've got a mother who's given birth to eight children, you know, often without any kind of medical intervention - just she gave birth to one of my brothers sort of on the bedroom floor in front of all of us -you know, you see that women are fairly capable.