Eleanor Catton

I think that you have to keep the reader front and centre if you're going to write something that people are going to love and be entertained by. ”

In my experience, and that of a lot of other women writers, all of the questions coming at them from interviewers tend to be about how lucky they are to be where they are - about luck and identity and how the idea struck them. ”

It's very brave going from a position of authority to one where you are an apprentice. ”

It seems pretentious to assume that we are not creatures of action. I think often it takes a situation of extreme absurdity, extreme action, to push us to the limits of what our character is, and to change us as people. ”

What I feel is that true creation happens when you're making something out of nothing - like it's divine, you know. Creation is a completely divine concept. ”

I've had countless reviews sort that have made me cry. It's funny, it doesn't ever get better either; you can't turn your ears off. ”

In improvising, you've got your scale; you've got the notes that are going to sound good with other notes, the intervals that are going to sound good. But you've also got all the chromatic possibilities, the possibilities of sounding dissident, of being unexpected. ”

It is less fun to talk about what I am feeling rather than what I am thinking. Saying 'I feel awesome' isn't really interesting or enquiring. ”

We throw at female artists this expectation that their work has to speak to the female experience. And if it doesn't, you're letting the side down. Throwing this stumbling block in the way of female artists is counterintuitive. ”

My mum was a children's librarian, so I spent a lot of time in the library. My reading life, because of my mum's work, was evenly split between American, Canadian, Australian and British authors. ”