Science and fiction both begin with similar questions: What if? Why? How does it all work? But they focus on different areas of life on earth.

I began writing at the age of 5, but there was a dark period between the ages of 8 and 16 when I didn't write. I started again at 16. And have no idea why, but it was suddenly the only thing I wanted to do.

Knowing was a temptation. What you don't know won't tempt you.

Neither of us says the word love, not once. It would be tempting fate; it would be romance, bad luck.

The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil

Plague has hung over human history. The biggest human extinction was after 1492 in North and South America when the mortality rate was 95 per cent, which is enormous. But again, I'm actually giving you grounds for optimism: There were enough to continue. The five per cent who made it through are what you need to survive a bottleneck, which we have been through before.

Never mind. Point being that you don't have to get too worked up about us, dear educated minds. You don't have to think of us aas real girls, real flesh and blood, real pain, real injustice. That might be too upsetting. Just discard the sordid part. Consider us pure symbol. We're no more real than money.