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" The demands of having to be 'masculine' are as damaging to men as the demands of having to be 'feminine' are to women. I wish we could all agree just to wash it all away. Begin again. "

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" Attending a book group is always a salutary experience for a writer. There's no guarantee that the people there will have enjoyed your book, and, as anyone who has taken part in a book group will know, half the fun is in ripping a book you haven't liked to shreds. "

Naomi Alderman

Experience

You

People

" As someone who went to school in the '70s and '80s, I can't say that I noticed much of a 'medals for all' culture myself. "

" I listen to terrible music when exercising. I mean, like, early Madonna, Boney M, the Fratellis, Shakira... I can't claim interesting musical taste. "

" The truth is, none of us is OK, not really. The best, most dear, most thoughtful and engaged and open and feminist men in my life have occasionally come out with some statement that's made me gasp. Then again, so have almost all the women. "

" In general, I'd rather ask questions and look stupid than keep quiet and not understand what someone's talking about. "

" Gaming is our cultural bogeyman - we blame it for everything from child obesity to violence to short attention spans. But any explanation that fits every situation ultimately explains nothing. "

" People who were always hardbodies love that competitive style of team-sports activity: they come up with timers and fitness contests and personal bests. But for the vast majority of people, competition in exercise is not fun. It's no fun to compete if you know you can never win. "

" Personal trainers, however nice, give me PE teacher flashbacks. "

Naomi Alderman

Give Me

Personal

" While 'Iron Man' is tremendous fun, it's another reminder of the pressure on all of us to make ourselves increasingly perfect and a little less human. And that is something it is important to resist. "

" Writers of feminist dystopian fiction are alert to the realities that grind down women's lives, that make the unthinkable suddenly thinkable. "

" The thing about having true fans, it seems, is that they remain loyal to their idea of what the work meant to them. And that might make them more exacting than the toughest studio executive or publishing boss. "

Naomi Alderman

Work

Fans

" I am someone who really would like to see more women in government, but Palin makes me cringe every time I hear about her. "

" Twitter's strength - and its weakness - is that it makes it extremely easy to share every passing thought with everyone on your friends list. "

" The value of the arts cannot be measured by its ability to preserve life but rather to enhance existence. "

" Sometimes you feel like the people who invest in hate are winning. Then you just want to talk about love and what it really means to love yourself. "

" I wish it were true that every child had access to an education that helped them reach their full potential. "

" Claude Cahun is a fascinating artist - one of the few women to be part of the surrealist movement, she and her partner Suzanne Malherbe took on men's names and made artworks that investigated female identity long before 'The Second Sex' or Cindy Sherman. "

" I've been paid less than men I worked with who contributed less to the project. "

" I love books. I want to read them, and I want to own them so they're always available to be reread. "

" I find it particularly irritating, if I go to a games conference to speak about my work, that often it's presumed that I'm the marketing girl - that's annoying. "

" It's very easy for a writer to spend much too much time in her head. "

" What makes 'The Handmaid's Tale' so terrifying is that everything that happens in it is plausible. "

" One of the hardest challenges posed by the modern world is how to deal with abundance. It's even harder to confront because admitting that it's a problem seems spoiled. "

" I find the sneeriness about 'selfie-culture' quite boring - I'm excited by young people taking control of their own images and finding out for themselves how much Photoshop has done for models. "

" The politics of fear are always the same. They are easily recognisable in retrospect. They are easy to acquiesce in at the time. "

" I honestly can't think of many more truly romantic gestures than a really well-thought-through prenuptial agreement. "

Naomi Alderman

Agreement

Think

" Our culture tends to denigrate things that are associated with women. It's OK for women to wear trousers, for example, but not OK for men to wear skirts. "

" Let's teach boys at school the personally and economically valuable skills of self-expression and emotional intelligence, of mediation and problem-solving. "

" Traditions are always puzzling to those who don't share them. I'm Jewish, so the idea of a 'perfect family Christmas' is foreign to me. "

Naomi Alderman

Perfect

Always

" I like things that take you by the hand and say, 'You think you know about this - you think you understand it - but there's so much that you don't.' "