You can't do science in a novel, but you can do philosophy. Or, if you're really lucky, you can manage to pose a question in such a way that other people will take it on.

My novels are high concept. I guess big ideas interest me more than, say, the minutiae of domestic life.

If something wants to be a story, it will be.

Real life is physical. Give me books instead. Give me the invisibility of the contents of books, the thoughts, the ideas, the images. Let me become part of a book. . . . an intertextual being: a book cyborg, or, considering that books aren't cybernetic, perhaps a bibliorg.

One minute I was playing chess and doing maths all the time, the next I had been rerouted into more 'normal' girls' activities: reading, writing stories and worrying about my clothes.

I hate stereotypes and I hate cliche.

One of the biggest problems for beginning writers is this need to over-explain.