I think I read Susan Brownmiller's classic book called "Femininity" when I was about 16. So yeah, it's been part of my mindset since a very early age. To me, what's crucial is to tell women's stories but also to tell them in a way that is fearless.

Every parent has those moments where they look at their child and think, 'There's a demon in those eyes and no one can see it but me!

She leaped into space, high, higher than she'd ever been in her life. She came down with a clean snap, and the crowd scattered like birds from the swing of her feet.

When I was four I thought everything in TV was just TV, then I was five and Ma unlied about lots of it being pictures of real and Outside being totally real. Now I’m in Outside but it turns out lots of it isn’t real at all.

For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.

The Collector [John Fowles book] does such a good job of capturing the mindset of a capturer, and also that's become a banal trope of every second crime novel: the weirdo, fetishistic watcher/stalker/kidnapper/kidnapper of women or children.

I'm really aware that in fiction, women are pretty much equal. There's a lot of very successful women novelists. Not so much [for women writers working] in film.