The way that I see astrology is as a repository of thought and psychology. A system we've created as a culture as way to make things mean things.

I really wanted to write an adventure story, a murder-mystery that was set during the gold-rush years in New Zealand.

I have observed that male writers tend to get asked what they think and women what they feel," she says. "In my experience, and that of a lot of other women writers, all of the questions coming at them from interviewers tend to be about how lucky they are to be where they are – about luck and identity and how the idea struck them. The interviews much more seldom engage with the woman as a serious thinker, a philosopher, as a person with preoccupations that are going to sustain them for their lifetime.

The proper way to understand any social system was to view it from above.

I see disappointment as something small and aggregate rather than something unified or great. With a little effort, every failure can be turned into something good.

Astrologys a moving system that depends on where youre looking at it from on Earth. My horoscope here in London would be completely different to down in New Zealand.

A woman fallen has no future; a man risen has no past.