When you're writing, you're making decisions about compression and the shape of a life, which are very similar to how we experience our inner consciousness.

The great difficulty is that you cannot be nice. If you want to take back the power, you have to behave in ways that are not conforming and will not be about pleasing other people.

A biography is never a biography of one person, of course, but the individual life of your protagonist will never conform. It will always bang up against history.

Men want to destroy the women: you've become bigger than me, people love you more, you have a public platform, that's my space you're taking up. I can't just divorce you, I have to destroy you.

One of the key things about the entitlement and power of patriarchy, but also within feminism, is not that it's wilful nastiness. But you can't ask for permission. You can negotiate and you can bring people on board and you can build a base but you can't expect for it to be given.

We're all story-telling creatures, and also I think that's the point about biography because the life is exemplary.

Eleanor Marx was a pragmatic person of actions and deeds and she was an organizer.