Personally, I have never wished I were a male novelist.

I wanted my life to start - but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me.

The fact is that in this day and age I don't think any novelist can assume that a book will get attention.

..and I thought how liking a boy was just the same as believing you wanted to know a secret - everything was better when you were denied and could feel tormented by curiousity or loneliness. But the moment of something happening was treacherous. It was just so tiring to have to worry about whether your face was peeling, or to have to laugh at stories that weren’t funny.

After I’d told her – the mall, the taxi, Cross stroking my hair – she said, ‘Did he kiss you?’ ‘John and Martin totally would have seen that,’ I said, and as I felt myself implying the circumstances had prevented our kissing, I thought maybe this was why you told stories to other people – for how their possibilities enlarged in the retelling.

I guess I consider myself at times to have intuition.

In some ways I think it would be very dignified if I went away for twenty years and then wrote my fourth book.