As a kid in the eighties, I didn't need much disposable income. I went to Catholic school - white shirt, plaid skirt - so fashion choices were limited. But youth finds a way. For me and my schoolmates, neon argyle socks were a crucial barometer of coolness. Hair ribbons, too, and they didn't come cheap.

Because I'm a woman writing about women who do bad things, that's somehow very 'other.' When men write that, it's called a novel. It's just a book.

I think women are very ambidextrous. We don't think twice about reading a book or a movie starring guys. But for guys, it's, like, 'Oh my God, that's a woman thing.' So with my son, I very carefully portion out the female heroes and characters to make sure he's getting an equal amount.

I'm probably a guy's girl, although I hate that phrase. I tend to have more close male friends than I do female friends, and I always have. I would say that of my 10 close friends, seven are men.

You have to take time and make time for each other. My current single 'Time Is Love' gives a lot of advice in that area, just spending quantity time with the one you love and the one you care about because that's when you really develop a relationship.

I have a complicated relationship with the horror genre. I love it; I loved it as a kid growing up, and I watched Chiller Theater in New York. So I loved it, but then you do feel if you do it too much, you're stuck there.

Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.

There is nothing romantic about teargas. Or smoke bombs or rubber bullets or sound cannons.