I feel powerful when I'm onstage talking to an audience. I like communicating; it feels like my calling in the world. Knowing what you're meant to be doing with your life is pretty bloody powerful.

My parents are both intellectuals and readers; my mother would take me to the library every few days from before I was one year old.

I was reading the Bible in Hebrew from a very young age, so that'll shape ideas about how words can move the world.

You can't write a thing that is hermetically sealed; there has to be a way for the audience to get in and participate. I think that's a massively valuable discipline for any artist.

I've always been a reader of science fiction, and I have loved a lot of feminist science fiction.

When I was 19, I wrote a novel, which was not very good, but I finished it.

For years, I looked down on my mother for shopping at Asda, and now I feel very ashamed of it.

I think some people's brains have more of a natural bent towards God than others.

I got my first library card, for Hendon Library in north London, when I was two years old.

The value of the arts cannot be measured by its ability to preserve life but rather to enhance existence.

Just as readers often turn into writers, novel-writers often become novel-reviewers.

As a gamer, I can't think of anything more annoying for everyone concerned than playing games in a shared living room.

While 'Iron Man' is tremendous fun, it's another reminder of the pressure on all of us to make ourselves increasingly perfect and a little less human. And that is something it is important to resist.

Twitter's strength - and its weakness - is that it makes it extremely easy to share every passing thought with everyone on your friends list.

When a marriage founders, this may well be cause for tremendous sadness, but it's not a failure of spirit or character. People change, their goals and dreams alter, their ideas of themselves grow, or they just meet someone they like better.

We urgently need to address the assumption bound up in our employment laws and custody arrangements that women are the 'natural child carers' and men don't really want much to do with their children.

Expect to be disgusted by your own early work. If writing is your vocation, if you hope that it might be your salvation, push on through the disgust until you find one true sentence, a few words that say more than you expected, something you didn't know until you set it down.

I've only got anywhere with Minecraft by getting my friends to explain it.

We all know that the desire for perfection can get in the way of authenticity and enjoyment; it's the same with games. There's a completist part to many of us that can't rest until we reach the perfect 100% finish point.

I wish it were true that every child had access to an education that helped them reach their full potential.

I wish that positions of power dependent on education were as open to abused children, poor children, working-class children as they are to the children of the rich and successful. I really wish that were true.

More choice doesn't make us happy, and we understand that no one has infinite choices about how to live life.

I've been a comics fan since my first hit of those gateway drawings: Judy, Asterix, and the TV cartoon 'Spider-Man and his Amazing Friend' - which naturally led me to Spider-Man comics.

I hate to be one of those people who forwards links to 'hilarious pictures' or 'brilliant games' to half their contacts database.

The hilarity or brilliance of a forwarded link is inversely proportional to the number of people it's sent to.

Competitive sports may be where exercise becomes 'fun' for children who are good at it, but for those who are less talented, it is where exercise becomes not only physically demanding but also emotionally painful and socially humiliating.

As someone who went to school in the '70s and '80s, I can't say that I noticed much of a 'medals for all' culture myself.

The thing about having true fans, it seems, is that they remain loyal to their idea of what the work meant to them. And that might make them more exacting than the toughest studio executive or publishing boss.

I love books. I want to read them, and I want to own them so they're always available to be reread.

Sometimes you feel like the people who invest in hate are winning. Then you just want to talk about love and what it really means to love yourself.

No one should ever feel obliged to speak or to put themselves out publicly online, but I do think it's a good thing to do. The more of us who are women, making our work and just going 'Here I am, here's my work,' the easier it gets for everybody. It's a good thing to do.

I have no wish to offend, but I do think that holy cows need challenging.

I like things that take you by the hand and say, 'You think you know about this - you think you understand it - but there's so much that you don't.'

It's absolutely delightful to get dressed up for a lovely evening, but when it goes from being a fun thing to being a chore, and a chore that men don't have to do, then we need to think about it differently.

My childhood was full of shocks and alarums, and I had to work a long time to make a life that pleases me.

Games don't cause racism. But the real-time chat makes nasty comments hard to moderate and easy to spread.

If something is a problem, it's all right to admit it.

The arts are valuable because they increase our sense of what it means to be human, not because of any specific skill or ability they confer.

One day, I will tell my story... where I came from and where I am now and how I remained positive.

Courtship is like simmering mutton. You cook for hours and hours to taste the soft meat. It doesn't happen in two seconds!

To kill yourself for earning a salary is not worth it.

Hard work and dedication is important to success, and I have those qualities.

In this hectic life, we have no time to take care of ourselves, hence massage is needed for rejuvenation and stress reduction. A lot of people are looking for quick fixes: like, they are taking medications, and they are doing other things which are not healthy. But massage is very holistic and natural.

At the end of the day, the one commonality that both Hindi cinema and Hollywood share is that they are full of talented and inspirational people. Outside of this, there are many differences, from the scheduling and rehearsal to promotion and directing techniques.

No matter where I travel, I make sure to carry a Vaseline body lotion with me to keep my skin well moisturised all the time.

I read about human psychology, practise balance, and accept that everything and everyone in our lives is transient. One day, people will criticise you, and the next day, they will praise you.

I don't consider myself as a glamour diva. If you get to know me, you will see that I am so dorky and weird.

My sister and I had a tough childhood, but my mom always said that travelling is the most beautiful thing you can do in your life. She always showed us the globe and gifted me an atlas.

I don't have to be a size zero anymore. But I still want to feel and look good.

You should never go on diet and must follow a healthy lifestyle.