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" I've been writing full-time since I was 23. "

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" I love it when novels contain a broad cast of characters, including queer ones. "

" It's painful to consider anything but writing. "

" I am clumsy, a late and nervous driver, and despise all sports except a little gentle dancing or yoga. "

" I'm really not one of these procrastinators who cleans the house in order to put off writing, but life gets in the way. "

" I come out of an academic background, and I'm aware that what I'm doing is simultaneously research and fiction. I want to meet both those obligations. "

" I think the only difference between me and other people is that when I hear of an interesting historical incident, I immediately write it down and Google it. "

" I'm named after Jane Austen's Emma, and I've always been able to relate to her. She's strong, confident but quite tactless. "

" Writers should be applauded for their ability to make things up. "

" Some writers can produce marvelous plots without planning it out, but I can't. In particular I need to know the structure of a novel: what's going to happen in each chapter and each scene. "

" You know the way there are two kinds of actors - the De Niro kind who's always De Niro, and then somebody like Daniel Day-Lewis, who transforms himself eerily? Well, I aim to be the Daniel Day-Lewis kind of writer. I don't have a house style. "

" Before I had kids, I thought you should never lie to a kid. But now I've had them, I realize you almost lie to them by definition, because if you're trying to summarize something for your 1-year-old, you put it in very simple terms. You only gradually complicate the explanation as they get older. "

" I remember a period where my publisher said to me, 'Look, your historical work is selling much better than your contemporary work, so please give us more historicals.' "

" I would say I have sort of a natural gift for character, and following one person's point of view at a time, and dialogue, but I'm not naturally good at strong plot. "

" You're meant to have an unhappy childhood to be a writer, but there's a lot to be said for a very happy one that just lets you get on with it. "

" The great thing about a short story is that it doesn't have to trawl through someone's whole life; it can come in glancingly from the side. "

" I have never been depressed or thrown a plate, which I attribute to the cathartic effects of writing books about people whose lives are more grueling than mine. "

" Any parent knows how to be the ideal parent. "

" Every parent has those moments where they look at their child and think, 'There's a demon in those eyes and no one can see it but me!' "

" You know, plenty of people headed off to Canada or America on the basis of government information, propaganda campaigns. Often you'd go off with a brochure in hand and you'd turn up and it wouldn't be like that at all. "

" I think it would be a shame for any writer to let their publishers in any way corral them into a single genre. "

" There's no neutral language about travel. Either travel is described in ways that make it sound kind of shallow or just glossy or silly or a way for rich people to spend their time; or else travel is often described in quite derogatory ways, you know, like immigrants swarming across borders, for instance. "

" I'm a huge planner, more and more so as the years go by. "

" I hate desks; they make me feel like a child doing homework. "

" I got in the habit of giving away a book as soon as I've finished it because I lived in a housing co-op at Cambridge and had no space to keep books. "

" I'm not at all snobby about book prizes and how they pollute the world of literature. Just like with the Olympics, a little bit of competition gets people truly engrossed in the business of literature. "

" I tend to be so lost in the work that I don't notice the weather. My partner will come home and say, 'Beautiful day, wasn't it?' and I'll say, 'Was it?' as I won't have noticed the real world at all. "

" A memoir is always the most authentic telling of a situation, but a novel gets to different places. "

" For all that being a parent is normal statistically, it's not normal psychologically. It produces some of the most extreme emotions you'll ever have. "

" I'm constantly saying, 'I read a fascinating article in 'The New Yorker'... ' I say it so often that sometimes I think I have nothing interesting to say myself, I merely regurgitate 'The New Yorker.' "

" I'm finding that success is way more time-consuming than failure ever was. "