I've actually got quite a good memory. I've good recall. It's often things which other people might not notice.

Some people say that you should read people who think completely differently from you so that everything you read and everything that they say is a challenge to you but there's something to be said for reading people where you think, 'Yes, that's how I would have said it if I could have found the words for it'.

Ghost City' was actually one of the few instances of non-fiction that I had written, and I felt that I probably said what I wanted. I think it must be different for every author; I haven't done very much of it, and perhaps, in a way, I found it rather painful, which is why I don't really do it very often.

Sundays in my teens were spent on homework: from 8 am until at least 8 pm, with stoppages to be fed and watered. I was carrying up to ten subjects simultaneously.

Do not make the writer stand behind a podium. Anything but. A podium reeks of the lecture hall. A music stand, on the other hand, is nicely minimal and lends the writer - who usually needs all the help s/he can get - a musician's second-hand cool-factor.

There's this feeling of creativity in Iceland.

I sing, but I also like to write. Creativity is the best part because you're then in your own zone and can talk about whatever you want to talk about - it lets you be free.

I deeply adored my mum. She was an extraordinary person, even for the prejudice I'm likely to have. She was beautiful, amusing, a tremendous elaborator of things into comic proportions and extravagant in her imagination.