I always write back to people who are kind enough to write to me. Actually, I don't write - I recline on my red velvet sofa with my feet on the coffee table and dictate the letters to my eldest son.

I always wanted to be Jo in 'Little Women.' She's a bit reckless and feckless, always getting into trouble like me. But I'm probably more like Madame Bovary.

When all my kids were at home, I used to write from midnight onwards.

I'm spectacularly disorganised. I wrote my latest book in seven different notebooks scattered throughout my house.

Movies don't look hard, but figuring it out, getting the shape of it, getting everybody's character right and having it be funny, make sense and be romantic, it's creating a puzzle. Yes, having been a writer for so long, I have an awareness of when things are going awry, but it doesn't mean I know how to fix them.

I'll only move in with my husband. There's no question of a live-in relationship.

When men get together, they moan about their wives. The commentary provided on marriage between groups of men is typically one from a viewpoint that assumes marriage to be life's greatest, most unfun mistake. Not only is it often as disingenuous as Joe Biden's hairline, but it's incredibly harmful.

Art is basically communication, and I think everyone who's a music lover has had that experience where a record or a recording has kept you company when no one else is around. And I think that is what I'm hoping that people get out of my music.