We all have to embrace the idea not to be worried about there being other women in the room. Gay men work with such solidarity.

I'm really interested in the minutiae of different tones and what that explains - how people's backgrounds are reflected in minute details of how they interact. It's true that I'm hypersensitive to all that. Writing is acting in the sense that you're imagining and inhabiting another. In the book I was trying to get at the root of what true acting is.

I am half-Jewish, and yet really hadn't been brought up within the Jewish faith. So I had felt culturally Jewish, if that's possible, without really understanding it.

I would have started writing a lot earlier if I hadn't been [Arthur Miller's daughter].

That's one thing I find about having children - it does unlock a door that separates you from other women who've had children.

As if there's a world that exists that you're semi-privy to yet can't quite penetrate - that's how it feels when you're starting a book.

I was 100 percent sure when I left university that I was going to be a painter.