New Zealand is the only country I know well enough to write about. It can sometimes lead to complications.

Every writer has to find their own way into writing.

People can say what they like about the eternal verities, love and truth and so on, but nothing's as eternal as the dishes.

I don't want to die, really. I'm interested in what happens next, so I've got to keep on.

When you are reading, someone has done a lot of work on your behalf, someone has had ideas and has then written and corrected and improved them so that they can be shared.

By the time ordinary life asserted itself once more, I would feel I had already lived for a while in some other lifetime, that I had even taken over someone else's life.

Will you still love me when I'm a monster?

At this stage I am not involved with young adults as closely as many other writers. My children are grown up and my grandchildren are still quite young.

I've never actually been a fighter myself - fighting tires me out and I'm not an efficient fighter anyway - but I have certainly seen other people have great complicated goes at one another.

I hope I am not too repetitive. However, coming to terms with death is part of the general human situation.

If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing twice.

Some bow to the spirit of collectivism, while you ascend to the spirit of your own eclectic rhythms.

TV is all about speed. TV is fast and furious. It's gunslinger territory.

It is with nations as it is with individuals. A book of history is a book of sermons.

I worked, studied, mothered and continued to be an activist. I found that Cuba was much different from the US; its government was genuinely trying to erase racism.

For fiction, Im not particularly nationalistic. Im not like the Hugo Chavez of Latin American letters, you know? I want people to read good work.

I want to be paid fairly for the work that I'm doing. That's what every single woman around the world wants.

But if I'm content with a little, Enough is as good as a feast.

Hope is an essential thread in the fabric of all fantasies, an Ariadne's thread to guide us out of the labyrinth ... Human beings have always needed hope, and surely now more than ever.

How do you dare to ask me for a solution? It's like asking Seneca for a solution. You remember what he did? He committed suicide!

I was fed by the music I listened to as a kid. Hip-hop fed me psychologically, spiritually, politically. I learned from that music.