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.

In real life nothing means anything. Stuff happens and there just is no structure.

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'm a great believer in gathering together all your obsessions and seeing if you can make a novel out of them.

People make events into stories. Stories give events meaning.

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

Honesty and authenticity are a big deal for me.