Every milieu has something ridiculous about it - film-making, the music world, painting - because people who take themselves seriously become funny pretty quickly.

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

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'm fascinated by what makes up a self, how one becomes a self, how much is it an answer to others and how much is it an essence of self.

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.

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

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.