Pubescent girls, it seems, are manifestly more likely to exhibit extreme and bizarre psychological symptoms than are teenage boys.

Female adolescence is - universally - an emotionally and psychologically intense period.

If you're a writer, you just keep following the path - keep going deeper and deeper into the things that interest you.

Girls are really looking to places that have limits and boundaries: where adults are the adults and there are rules, and where they feel safe.

In my family, we can't just sit and be together. We have to be shelling peas or husking corn or something. A larger task. Some way of being with people.

I try and have family time, all the time, so you know, I get to see them a lot. And I'm always with my friends, my boyfriend, it helps me keep grounded and kind of sane.

You really can have your dreams and at the same time have a family. But it has to be a really deliberate practice.

When you see the poet laureate saying that every child should have read 'Ulysses' and that you're just giving up on children if you think it's elitist - does that include children with special needs or whose first language isn't English?