My professional and human obsession is the nature of language, and my best relationships are with other writers. In many ways, I know George Eliot better than I know my husband.

You learn different things through fiction. Historians are always making a plot about how certain things came to happen. Whereas a novelist looks at tiny little things and builds up a sort of map, like a painting, so that you see the shapes of things.

I like feeling my way into different minds and experiences. It comes naturally and always has.

A surprising number of people - including many students of literature - will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since they were children. Sadly, being taught literature often destroys the life of the books.

Discovery Channel's 'Planet Healers' will provide a look into how businesses can exist for more than just making profits, how they can help create a better and sustainable future.

The scientist is also a composer... You could think of science as discovering one particular thing - a supernova or whatever. You could also think of it as discovering this whole new way of seeing the world.

We've become so accustomed to teaching to the tests that we've forgotten about a child's joy of discovery.

Actors don't have to be linked in real life for the chemistry to be translated on screen.