I quite liked having a baby - I think I won't put it more strongly than that. But I had no intention of allowing motherhood to disrupt my work as an archeologist.
I'm quite an optimist, quite happy in life, quite smiley.
Some writers - most, I suspect - write in isolation. I think I'd always found that quite difficult.
I actually think of myself as quite a shy person, although I know I give the impression of someone much more confident. I think what I do have is a capacity to listen to the other, even if the other is an opponent. That leads, in all senses of the word, to an engagement.
My character, Rick Spleen, is a what-if version of me, really, where nothing did quite turn out right and everything else is still around the corner.
You're never quite prepared for the inundation of stardom, or whatever you want to call it.
Some writers are more natural public performers than others; personally I find it quite strange giving interviews. But everyone has parts of their job that they like more than others. You can't complain if you get to do what you love doing most of the time, can you?
We needed to make a sound that's not gonna fit in with everything else - we wanted to make something that was completely unique and individual to us. We spent a lot of time trying to make a sound that was a One Direction sound. At first it was quite hard to do that, but I'm really happy with the sound.
I mean, I went to a Catholic boys' school for a year, but that was to play hockey. Religion class was quite contentious for me.
I have an aunt who believed strongly that teaching kids that Shakespeare is 'hard' is wrong, so she handed me 'Hamlet' when I was in kindergarten to see what would happen. What happened was I did a book report on 'Hamlet' and caused quite a lot of trouble!
