You're meant to have an unhappy childhood to be a writer, but there's a lot to be said for a very happy one that just let's you get on with it.

I actually tried to think of the story [Room] in gender-neutral terms at first and said to myself, "OK, would this work if it were a man?" Well no, you can't make a man pregnant, so it's got to be a woman.

I read a lot of social history. If I'm in an art gallery and a picture intrigues me, I immediately write down the title and I google it. I do a lot of googling and looking out for good stories. I can almost smell them sometimes.

Nowadays, 'invisibility' was supposed to be the big problem, but the way I saw it was, all that mattered was to be visible to yourself.

I always wince a little bit when I send me to each of my new books. I wince at submitting myself to my father's judgment. But, of course, he's such a fond father that he always writes back, saying it's the greatest thing ever written.

Stories are a different kind of true.

Any parent knows how to be the ideal parent.