Novels without female characters were a lifeless desert.

Four or five years - nothing at all. But no one over thirty could understand this peculiarly weighted and condensed time, from late teens to early twenties, a stretch of life that needed a name, from school leaver to salaried professional, with a university and affairs and death and choices in between. I had forgotten how recent my childhood was, how long and inescapable it once seemed. How grown up and how unchanged I was.

If life was a dream, then dying must be the moment when you woke up. It was so simple it must be true. You died, the dream was over, you woke up. That's what people meant when they talked about going to heaven. It was like waking up.

Reading groups, readings, breakdowns of book sales all tell the same story: when women stop reading, the novel will be dead.

Something has happened, hasn't it? ... It's like being up close to something so large you don't even see it. Even now, I'm not sure I can. But I know it's there.

Screenwriting is an opportunity to fly first class, be treated like a celebrity, sit around the pool and be betrayed.

At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.