Susanna Clarke

Alan Moore is a peculiarly unsung triumph of British culture, and Northampton, where he was born in 1953, the son of brewery worker Ernest and printer Sylvia, is where you must go to find him.

Nothing, I find, has prepared me for the sight of my own characters walking about. A playwright or screenwriter must expect it; a novelist doesn't and naturally concludes that she has gone mad.

I could always imagine more interesting places to be than where I was. And more interesting people than me being there. Eventually, this led to making up stories and writing things down.

I'm kind of a grinder. I'm a Cinderella, an underdog story who fights.

If you compare NASA's annual budget to explore the heavens, that one year budget would fund NOAA's budget to explore the oceans for 1,600 years.

Jane Austen was an extraordinary woman; to actually be able to survive as a novelist in those days - unmarried - was just unheard of.