Broadly speaking, there are two approaches to crime: the realistically detailed police procedural, usually grim and downbeat, and the more left-field, joyous theatre of ideas in which past masters once specialised. Knowing that I would never be able to handle the former, I set about reviving the latter.

I left school on a wet Thursday afternoon, found a room in a shared house in North London, and started my first job on the following Monday as a courier for an advertising agency.

I've always loved what I'd term 'dark fiction' writers, everyone from J. G. Ballard to Mervyn Peake and Philip Pullman. I'm not sure it's a genre, but it's what I like best.

Reality TV has blown away the need for a roster of familiar faces in films. Plus, films became franchise and didn't need stars. But the real difference between stars and celebrities is that stars have training and talent, and celebrities just have exposure.

When I lived in New York, not only did I have safety locks on the door but I had the music going, keeping the city at a distance, trying to find creative time and peace and so forth.

If you are a reader of 'Harper's Bazaar,' to me, you are a woman who loves fashion, but not just fashion; you love fashion, you love travel, you love art, you love music.

What I appreciate about Sleater-Kinney is that we did six records, and they all felt different. It was a band that was able to encapsulate different sensibilities because we were focusing on it as music and art and not as a statement.

There's always somebody you can call and go have lunch with and just talk out an idea. And it's great, because I need that. It's part of my writing process, to early on sit people down and say, 'Alright, this film I'm working on...' and I tell them everything I have.