What I need to write well is a combination of heat, light and solitude.

In my mind's eye, Shakespeare is a huge, hot sea-beast, with fire in his veins and ice on his claws and inscrutable eyes, who looks like an inchoate hump under the encrustations of live barnacle-commentaries, limpets and trailing weeds.

Where would we be without inhibitions? They're quite useful things when you look at some of the things humans do if they lose them.

It's because I'm a feminist that I can't stand women limiting other women's imaginations. It really makes me angry.

There is a certain aesthetic pleasure in trying to imagine the unimaginable and failing, if you are a reader.

I did a lot of my writing as though I was an academic, doing some piece of research as perfectly as possible.