I think that when something happens when you're growing up, like a death or divorce, it does open the world slightly because things aren't as straightforward.

People keep saying how amazing it is having a female lead, and I just sort of feel, 'Well, of course!'

My agent called me up and said, 'There is a tremendous female lead in the new 'Star Wars' film, and I think you're really going to like it.' The opportunity to play someone determined, who's trying to find her skills as a leader; to be in a fantasy movie; to be able to do a leading female role in a film of that scale - that's very, very rare.

My mother was in the kind of late-'60s, early-'70s origins of female emancipation. And she was very much like, 'You're not going to be defined by how you look. It's going to be about who you are and what you do.'

There is this difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man, really is so; but he that thinks himself the wisest, is generally the greatest fool.

The true object of moral and political disquisition is pleasure or happiness.

I think Britain has this tradition which suggests that if you make the readers laugh too much, you can't really be serious. Whereas, I think one of the functions laughter can perform in a book, as in life, is that it's a reaction to genuine horror.

There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.