The minute you become a leader of a country, you go into a very small club. You join that sort of pantheon of other world leaders.

If you're growing up in times of peace and live in a country where there's plenty of food and good healthcare, you grow up without any relationship with death.

It's really a lovely feeling to write knowing that failure is taken off the table because if it's bad you just never show it to anyone.

I am not a politics wonk. I like the idea of my writing reflecting more about who I am or other people.

It might be more difficult because you haven't got a book or a prop, but for the most part I like to write unpaid... initially and my own stories.

I wrote 'Hereafter' quickly and without mapping it out too much or being too schematic. As an exercise, I think that was incredibly important.

The minute you become a leader of a country, you go into a very small club. You join that sort of pantheon of other world leaders.