Juno Dawson

"I think there are a lot of gay men out there who are gay men as a consolation prize because they couldn't be women. That was certainly true of me."

"I just wanted to get f****d like a woman. That's what it's about. It’s not about what hole it's going in."

"The publishing world tends to focus more on the “young”, less on the “adult”. But I spend lots of time with teenagers and they’re truly the broadband generation. They’ve been online all their lives and seen things that would make milk curdle: beheadings, graphic violence, hardcore porn. Shielding them is never going to work. What makes this book YA is that it tackles issues in a non-judgmental way. We know these things exist, so let’s talk about them…"

"I was desperate to write a trans character for whom it wasn’t really an issue. After you come out, after the initial makeover and being on hormones for a few years, what happens next? That’s a story nobody tells…"

"Brands have to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to diversity…Don’t hire a black woman or a trans woman or a disabled woman and then get cross if they have opinions about their colour or their gender or their disability. The danger is if you’re hired just to be pretty but then you start having opinions about abortion, then you’re gonna get dropped. And of course you should be able to do both."

"Ever since my first novel, people have had quite a snippy vibe about YA, and it’s almost like: ‘Do you think one day you’ll write a real book?’…"

"My view is that despite the law being very clear, actually, a few very determined transphobes have crawled their way to the heart of the law like maggots in an apple."

"Look, I can't speak for all trans women, but I just want to live my life the way I always imagined it. I have become the version of myself I wanted to be when I was four."

"I have the same choices over my life and body that I would want for every single person on earth. I’m not trying to make a statement about what a woman is, I just want to be one. I don't really care if someone thinks that is biologically impossible; I've got near enough to be wholly satisfied. I am happy."