I always think it's a mistake when you actually have to set books aside and actually sit down and research something. I always think they've got to come from within.

Leaders don't ever "arrive." If we ever think we're done, we are done!

I wanted to portray very, very dark subject matter and a deceptively complex story in the brightest colours and simplest lines possible to leave the readers reeling.

The one thing we can all relate to is family, and family has its traumas sometimes. Sometimes things don't go well for people. Sometimes things are tough. So everybody kind of knows someone who's been in this situation before, and I think that's what makes it work.

Others control our opportunities, we control our readiness.

What I wanted to do was drown something enormous, like a Star Trek or Star Wars kind of space opera-type thing, but actually make it about someone who was just married to the wrong guy, and that guy just happens to be this amazing dictator, and she has to get her kids as far away as possible from this guy. So something that could almost be a TV movie, if you'd ground it and set it in Wisconsin or something like that, but to give it this enormous setting.

I just think adding superheroes to something instantly makes it more interesting. I have a friend who says every movie should either be a Spider-Man movie, or at least have Spider-Man in it. I thought it was such a brilliant quote. It kind of is true, in a weird way.