Being a twin, and being my sister's twin, is such a defining part of my life that I wouldn't know how to be who I am, including a writer, without that being somehow at the centre.

I've written fiction for as long as I can remember; it's always been my preferred form of play.

I wrote fiction during my entire childhood, from age 4 to 18, and started writing plays when I went to Yale and Oxford.

As a novelist, I ask of myself only that I tell the truth and that I tell it beautifully.

How can I come from a nation? How can a human being come from a concept?

The big ideas always come in flashes. I don't really craft stories that much. I genuinely don't know where these people come from and I've often wondered if writing is just a socially acceptable form of madness.

As a writer, one is obliged to release her words, to let them live in the world on their own.