I think we still believe that ambition is for boys.

Art can make a difference because it pulls people up short. It says, don't accept things for their face value; you don't have to go along with any of this; you can think for yourself.

We don't go to Shakespeare to find out about life in Elizabethan England; we go to Shakespeare to find out about ourselves now.

I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had.

...there are two kinds of writing: the one you write and the one that writes you.

I had huge ambition for literature. I don't see the point of doing anything if you don't have ambition for it.

Explore me' you said and I collected my ropes, flasks and maps, expecting to be back home soon. I dropped into the mass of you and I cannot find the way out. Sometimes I think I’m free, coughed up like Jonah from the whale, but then I turn a corner and recognise myself again. Myself in your skin, myself lodged in your bones, myself floating in the cavities that decorate every surgeon’s wall. That is how I know you. You are what I know.