Abuse directed at women is always sexual or violent.

In my view, the future of politics is, without a doubt, social liberalism married to economic conservatism. Which means we have to make an economic argument to social liberals, that it's OK to vote for us. But we won't run the economy into the ground at the same time.

Once you are a proper, serious law-maker, you can't break the laws you're writing.

Abuse directed at women is always sexual or violent.

Menshn is a play on the word mention, and in the U.S. that's how it'll be perceived. Like Tumblr or Flickr. People in the U.K. thought that I'd named it after myself.

Are you trivialising the sisterhood if you dye your hair or have your eyebrows threaded? I'd say the answer to that is no. But equally, it's a perfectly valid feminist thing to say there is a certain amount of attention on a woman's appearance, and I don't wish that to be the focus or a distraction.

Yes, I know, shaming, isn't it? I always say you can take the girl out of the 80s, but you can't take the 80s out of the girl. Before I wrote my first novel, I was reading one of the self-help classics – and it's as cheesy as you like, so feel free to laugh, Guardian readers – called Awaken The Giant Within, by Tony Robbins, and it inspired me to try. I like motivational books, because I like the go-getting American spirit – your destiny is in your own hands, life is what you make it, don't accept your limitations, jump before you're pushed, leap before you look.