Remember that anybody who is clever enough to set you free is clever enough to enslave you.

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.

Solitude is a condition best enjoyed in company.

Never underestimate how extraordinarily difficult it is to understand a situation from another person's point of view.

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

She is a loner, too bright for the slutty girls and too savage for the bright girls, haunting the edges and corners of the school like a sullen disillusioned ghost

It is a feature of human nature to give what we most wish to receive.