"Writing is hard work. Even when you start with the raw ingredients – a mad family, a sense of humour, talent…it’s hard work. But you do get to sit around in silk pyjamas all day."

"I read Wuthering Heights when I was seven. I stole a copy from the library. We weren’t allowed books in the house because they’re ‘dirty and dusty’. My mum had a shelf of fake leather books which my dad used to hide whisky behind. I used to die of embarrassment every time a visitor tried to pick up a book and realized it was fake. The library was forbidden so it became exotic and sexy in my imagination. I was dying to get in there and read a book!"

"I wouldn’t want to be labelled a Woman Writer even though I’m definitely not a man. And I think Scottish Writer has some unfortunate associations. Last century when I was commissioned to write my first novel, Scottish writers were being bullied by a purple nosed publisher to write in dialect. Well my voice is authentically Scottish. I’m an educated Scottish person who escaped. My voice is as valid as a whiny cunt who lives in a council flat and doesn’t quite speak English. That doesn’t mean I have to sound like Evelyn Waugh either. I’d like to be called a Good Writer. To quote a review on Amazon, "Carole Morin is a Fucking Genius. Fact." Fucking Genius will do."

"It’s all real. It came out of my head. Everything in there is real. Even the things invented and imagined."

"Writing things down is dangerous. Ink can’t be erased without leaving a mess behind."

"Betrayal is a cliché … Lies are so suburban. But murder is nice and clean."

"God isn’t in the details, He’s in the structure."

"I wanted to wake up with a new name, a new hair colour, and almost the same heart."

"Imagination is all we have in the end."

"Characters in novels are all fiction like the world they live in. Of course Vivien Lash has things in common with me but if she actually was me I wouldn’t have been able to invent her. And I’m not plotting to murder my husband! The closest connection between me and my characters is that we live in a city that’s recognisable as London, but it’s a version of London that came out of my head."

"Murder and sex are both Dionysian. Creative work is first anarchic; and then it’s structured. It’s right brain then left brain. Anarchic then controlled. To be a really good writer, you have to be able to do both. It’s hard work and it takes longer than murder or sex."

"I like being described as "Sylvia Plath with a sense of humour." But I wouldn’t marry Ted Hughes. He’s dead for one thing."

"Books were banned from my house, my mum thought they were ‘germ traps’, so I was always sneaking into the library, hiding under a big plant; reading. I was escaping into another world as well as finding out stuff that was news to me."

"There’s a theory that if you have an interesting childhood then you have enough material to last a lifetime. But that implies that art is always autobiographical when reinvention and imagination are the most important elements. But it doesn’t hurt to have a mad family! Of course I didn’t notice until I’d escaped – when I left home as a teenager on a diplomatic scholarship – how odd my family were."

"Life-affirming people are a bit creepy and self-consciously life-affirming art is usually awful. My books tend to have happy endings, or at least that’s one way of reading them. My characters are exuberant and funny as well as dark. Duality is the essence of my voice so it’s appropriate for me to have an evil twin to blame things on."

"Carole Morin has enough autobiography to last her a lifetime. 90 per cent of it comprises Dead Glamorous — or at least the 90 per cent she claims to be true. The rest is obfuscation and exaggeration, designed to give her already improbable tale the sheen of some glorious myth."

"With her ‘grotesque gallery’ of relatives I wonder why she even bothers to make things up."

"Words of affection, howsoe'er express'd, The latest spoken still are deem'd the best."

"But woman's grief is like a summer storm, Short as it violent is."

"Some men are born to feast, and not to fight; Whose sluggish minds, e'en in fair honor's field, Still on their dinner turn— Let such pot-boiling varlets stay at home, And wield a flesh-hook rather than a sword."

"The brave man is not he who feels no fear, For that were stupid and irrational; But he, whose noble soul its fear subdues, And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from."

"The hushed winds wail with feeble moan Like infant charity."

"The tyrant now Trusts not to men: nightly within his chamber The watch-dog guards his couch, the only friend He now dare trust."

"Oh, swiftly glides the bonnie boat, Just parted from the shore, And to the fisher's chorus-note, Soft moves the dipping oar!"

"Sweet sleep be with us, one and all! And if upon its stillness fall The visions of a busy brain, We'll have our pleasure o'er again, To warm the heart, to charm the sight, Gay dreams to all! good night, good night."

"A willing heart adds feather to the heel, And makes the clown a winged Mercury."

"Think'st thou there are no serpents in the world But those who slide along the grassy sod, And sting the luckless foot that presses them? There are who in the path of social life Do bask their spotted skins in Fortune's sun, And sting the soul."

"To be honest, I wasn't really a huge follower of Doctor Who before I got this part. I mean I knew it was huge, but … I was nothing like my mum, who's a proper diehard Whovian. She's got a Tardis money-bag, and Dalek bubble-bath. But having read the first episode I was utterly smitten, and with the character. Amy's a sassy lady, funny and passionate, and her relationship with the doctor has a really interesting dynamic."

"We knew Karen was perfect for the role the moment we saw her. She brought an energy and excitement to the part that was just fantastic."

"We saw some amazing actresses for this part. But when Karen came through the door, the game was up — she was funny, clever, gorgeous and sexy. Or Scottish, which is the quick way of saying it. A generation of little girls will want to be her. And a generation of little boys will want them to be her too."

"I was a little worried that I was going to look like an overgrown fetus … Maybe that’s true. But it’s liberating. It’s very liberating. Everyone here should shave their heads."

"He's just really unlikely as a hero — which makes him so brilliant, I think, because he's like this mad professor."

"I am legitimately Scottish. I can officially say — yes. Yeah, I am from Inverness in the Highlands of Scotland."

"I got the recall, the second audition. That was when I started sweating. This huge thing. And it was so secretive I couldn't even tell BBC reception where I was going, had to pretend it was for something called Panic Moon, which is an anagram of companion."

"This is the word tightrope. Now imagine a man, inching across it in the space between our thoughts. He holds our breath.There is no word net.You want him to fall, don't you? I guessed as much; he teeters but succeeds. The word applause is written all over him."

"One saw I was alive. Loosened his belt. My bowels opened in a ragged gape of fear. Between the gap of corpses I could see a child. The soldiers laughed. Only a matter of days separate this from acts of torture now. They shot her in the eye."

"Six hours like this for a few francs. Belly nipple arse in the window light, he drains the colour from me. Further to the right, Madame. And do try to be still. I shall be represented analytically and hung in great museums. The bourgeoisie will coo at such an image of a river-whore. They call it Art."

"There'll be what you might call a moment of inspiration – a way of seeing or feeling or remembering, an instance or a person that's made a large impression. Like the sand and the oyster, it's a creative irritant. In each poem, I'm trying to reveal a truth, so it can't have a fictional beginning"

"When you have a child, your previous life seems like someone else's. It's like living in a house and suddenly finding a room you didn't know was there, full of treasure and light."

"What do I have to help me, without spell or prayer, endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous, the death of love?"

"As anyone who has the slightest knowledge of my work knows, I have little in common with Larkin, who was tall, taciturn and thin-on-top, and unlike him I laugh, nay, sneer, in the face of death. I will concede one point: we are both lesbian poets."

"I cannot say where you are. Unreachable by prayer, even if poems are prayers. Unseeable in the air, even if souls are stars."

"Light gatherer. You fell from a star into my lap, the soft lamp at the bedside mirrored in you, and now you shine like a snowgirl, a buttercup under a chin, the wide blue yonder you squeal at and fly in."