Oh, there's a teenage girl inside all women. It comes out mainly when we walk into a room filled with other women and immediately feel self-conscious. I do, anyway. I'm always convinced I'm going to fall flat on my face or something.

I'm very much, like, 'We've all got to help each other.' If there's a new female writer, I'm much more likely to read her book than if it's by a new male writer.

On a normal novel, I would like to get 2,000 to 2,500 words done in a day; I average 10,000 words a week, and then there's a day for planning. With the historical ones, it's a lot harder because you have to stop and double-check facts.

I would quite like to become a mainstream thriller writer, obviously, because I enjoy writing those stories, and it is the best way to secure your career.

A puppet, for example, is just a piece of wood, a couple of rivets, but put them together, and if you know how to do it, and the audience's imagination joins in with this, then a miracle will come out of that machine. That is what we and the audience do in the theatre - we create miracles in that space.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.

There are better ways we can transform this virulent hatred - by living our ideals, the Peace Corps, exchange students, teachers, exporting our music, poetry, blue jeans.

I learned a long time ago that reality was much weirder than anyone's imagination.