I concentrate on the lives of individuals whom the reader comes to know and feel with intimately.

Fiction came quite a while later. I began with short stories and fiction for children.

I didn't choose Russia but Russia chose me. I had been fascinated from an early age by the culture, the language, the literature and the history to the place.

The poets whom I knew then were all men and all seemed dauntingly sure of themselves - although I am sure that really they were as uncertain as I was.

I was always influenced by language.

Children will not pretend to be enjoying books, and they will not read books because they have been told that these books are good. They are looking for delight.

It is a violation which has obsessed the tyrants of the twentieth century. They do not want simply to kill their opponents, but to liquidate them, to deny that they have ever existed.

Those who try to obliterate the past are injuring the present.

A novel, in the end, is a container, a shape which you are trying to pour your story into.

Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear.

I hope that readers will tear through my books because they can't stop themselves - and then, maybe, read them again and find new things there.

I would like people to come into my Dreamworld and then choose to stay.

Poets go through a very tough apprenticeship in the use of words.

When you are young you don't always realise how full of doubts everybody is.

Writing children's books gives a writer a very strong sense of narrative drive.

I can remember being in my pram: children stayed in their prams much longer then than they do now. A big bouncy pram with black covers and a hood with metal clips that could trap your fingers. I was looking up at my sister who was sitting on the pram seat, with her back to me.

However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition.

However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned.

I have learned so much from working with other poets, travelling and reading with them, spending days discussing poems in progress. There is the sense that we are all, as writers, part of something which is more powerful than any of us.

I concentrate on the lives of individuals whom the reader comes to know and feel with intimately.

If we understand the past, we are more likely to recognise what is happening around us.

To try to expunge an individual's history is a terrible violation.

The language has got to be fully alive - I can't bear dull, flaccid writing myself and I don't see why any reader should put up with it.

I enjoy research; in fact research is so engaging that it would be easy to go on for years, and never write the novel at all.

I could start with Mandelstam, who was a huge influence on my early writing.

Mourning Ruby is not a flat landscape: it is more like a box with pictures painted on every face. And each face is also a door which opens, I hope, to take the reader deep into the book.

As individuals, we are shaped by story from the time of birth; we are formed by what we are told by our parents, our teachers, our intimates.

My first collection of poems was published by Bloodaxe Books, which was then a very new imprint.

For you where never my blood sister so no more shall I call you little sister.

I was a model for eight years. That's the deal: People look. But I didn't like being looked at and never seen.

Do you lend books and DVDs to people? If so, don't you always regret it? All my life I have forced books on to people who have subsequently forgotten all about it. Meanwhile, on my shelves sit many orphaned books loaned to me over the years by trusting, innocent souls - some as long ago as the Seventies.

I'm always interested in contemporary fiction.

It seems like every week we are considering bills that would make it harder to limit the amount of carbon we are dumping into our atmosphere, and prevent implementation of clean technologies. The voters who sent us here deserve better.

The scene was not a happy one yet we looked upon it in the cold stoical spirit of a soldier; a slight chilling pang and then a return soul and body to the enemy before us.

I'm your knight in shining armor. I'm here to save you from Linkin Park.

My ship was also in better condition than when she sailed from Boston on her long voyage. She was still as sound as a nut, and as tight as the best ship afloat. She did not leak a drop - not one drop!

It's a dream come true as I await the release of my debut single 'Krazy Konnection' with Salim Merchant and then my debut album!

I'm not an artist. I set the camera up and tell my story.

Sometimes I'll dress like a boy, sometimes I'll dress like a Japanese crazy teenybopper. I have clothes from the 7th grade that I've kept and still wear.

I think you have to let go of this idea that you can be precious about everything, and let it be the abstract mess that it is.

After 'Born to Run,' I had a reaction to my good fortune. With success, it felt like a lot of people who'd come before me lost some essential part of themselves. My greatest fear was that success was going to change or diminish that part of myself.

Where there is cake there is hope. And there is always cake.

Being born and raised in Chicago made me tough. It made me strong. I feel like I can deal with anything. I truly believe that in my heart.

My three husbands were afraid of me. I am a very powerful woman.

If nothing else, the act of reaching a milestone often serves to reveal a superstar's true nature.

Never attribute to malice, that which can be reasonably explained by stupidity.

I always felt older than my years, maybe because I was married to someone older.

Financial institutions, the corporate world and civil society - all must uphold high standards of probity in their working. Only a genuine partnership between the Government and its people can bring about positive change to create a just society.

I'll watch a Pixar movie over and over and over again. I'll be with friends of mine who have kids, that want to watch 'Finding Nemo,' and I'm like, 'Yeah, okay, let's watch 'Nemo' again, for the seven billionth time!,' because they're amazing movies.