Aminatta Forna

What ultimately happened is that my country had a war. I think it would be extraordinary, as a writer, not to want to write about that.

Most writers I know go for word counts, and I used to be a journalist, so I guess that's ingrained.

I temporarily became a surgeon for 'Memory of Love'. I spent two weeks in an operating theatre, watching amputations, and I loved it.

I'm a big action junkie. I grew up on the '80s action movies - the bad ones and the good ones.

It took me realizing that a broken heart has never actually killed anyone to find the courage to ask for what I want, in just about every situation. That was part of my own growing up.

We define ourselves as intelligent. That's odd, because we're doing the definition - We're creating our own definition and saying, 'We are intelligent!'