NAOMI ALDERMAN

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.

Traditions are always puzzling to those who don't share them. I'm Jewish, so the idea of a 'perfect family Christmas' is foreign to me.

Too many keep-fit ideas are designed for those who are already fit, and they're just no fun.

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

I've always had a real interest in the way that science fiction can portray a world that could be different to our world, which I find a really exciting thought.

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.

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

Writers of feminist dystopian fiction are alert to the realities that grind down women's lives, that make the unthinkable suddenly thinkable.

I grew up an Orthodox Jew, and now I'm not an Orthodox Jew. So I have sympathy for people who lose their faith.

Attending a book group is always a salutary experience for a writer. There's no guarantee that the people there will have enjoyed your book, and, as anyone who has taken part in a book group will know, half the fun is in ripping a book you haven't liked to shreds.

It's very easy for a writer to spend much too much time in her head.

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

I find the sneeriness about 'selfie-culture' quite boring - I'm excited by young people taking control of their own images and finding out for themselves how much Photoshop has done for models.

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

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

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.

I am a geek, and proud of it.

I was incredibly inspired by Oprah Winfrey as a young woman.

I don't think I have any particular problem with God.

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

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.

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.

Claude Cahun is a fascinating artist - one of the few women to be part of the surrealist movement, she and her partner Suzanne Malherbe took on men's names and made artworks that investigated female identity long before 'The Second Sex' or Cindy Sherman.