It's hard to overestimate the teenage appetite for high drama.

I work three days at home, and two days in the British Library or the London Library, just to get out of the house and hide from the children.

you feel a little bit lost right now about what to do with your life, a bit rudderless and oarless and aimless but that's okay that's alright because we're all meant to be like that at twenty-four.

But at the best of times she feels like a character in a Muriel Spark novel — independent, bookish, sharp-minded, secretly romantic.

At university, I used to write silly little sketches and monologues, but never fiction.

Maybe we've grown out of each other.

And of course there is always joy in witnessing the joy of others