War used to be something you could stand on the nearby hill and watch. Now we have total war; everybody's in it. We have total economics as well. Everything affects everybody. The Malaysian currency shakes, and people around the world are seriously affected.

You never know the answers to the questions of life until you are asked.

I think the veil is a way of taking power away from women.

Sometimes when you finish a book, you don't know quite what you've got.

Sometimes writing a novel is not unlike having a baby. You'd have to ask a female novelist to compare the pain.

When you're writing for the screen you're really thinking all the time of what you have to do to make sure that they have the information that they need, that the emotional thread is not snapped, that the story moves at the right speed, to keep the audience hopefully sitting on the edge of their seats or else weeping or laughing.

I hate admitting that my enemies have a point.