At university, I worked at a hotel in housekeeping. We saw so many weird things in people’s rooms. Guests would leave sex and party stuff behind!

I was a bailiff for half a morning. I couldn’t stand it.

When I started as a researcher in the BBC, I was working for an editor who was a self-confessed misogynist. He used to practise shooting by aiming his air gun at an aerosol can balanced just over my head. I made it a matter of pride not to flinch as the pellets whizzed by.

I was the third Saab dealer in the United States — you could have a dealership just by asking for one. Had to put up my own money for five cars. Terrible car then, may I say.

At what age? It’s been a long path. I’ll stick with Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell. (“Someday I’d like to try a book like that,” I said to myself, “only with a female narrator. It would of course be quite different.”)

As for motivation, I'd say it's a combo of 50s Puritan work ethic and finish-it-itis -- I hate not finishing things.

By members of a human race who have managed to avoid annihilating their entire species and can thus still do some reading, and remembering.

Anonymous. She’s working to make the planet greener.

Lazy, anxious, and distracted.

In 1972, by Farley Mowat, after I’d had a modest success: “Now you’re a target, and people will shoot at you.” Which is not about how to write, but about some of the consequences of having done so.