I need to be in charge, and that comes from when I was growing up and money was always an issue. I didn't want to feel the fear of poverty again, and I suppose, in that way, I qualify as Thatcher Youth.

Having a daughter has reawakened my sense of feminism. I want to protect her.

I'm a woman, and I'm interested in writing stories from a female perspective.

Feminism isn't just for women. It's for men.

Writing is a mysterious process, and many ideas come from deep within the imagination, so it's very hard to say how characters come about. Mostly, they just happen.

For a long time, I believed that a great piece of music on its own could do more to stir the soul than any other single art form.

Doing acting opened up other creative outlets; it made me feel freer as an artist.

First, I'd become an avid reader of blogs, especially music blogs, and they seemed to be where the critical-thinking action was at, to have the kind of energy that I associate with rock writing of the 1970s or Internet e-mail discussion lists a decade ago.