People say I make strange choices, but they're not strange for me. My sickness is that I'm fascinated by human behavior, by what's underneath the surface, by the worlds inside people.
I am under the spell of language, which has ruled me since I was 10.
It never bothered me that people made fun of my passion for gold... I would never feel bad when people ridiculed me for my fascination with gold.
I've always been entranced by writing.
I'm not an historian but I can get interested - obsessively interested - with any aspect of the past, whether it's palaeontology or archaeology or the very recent past.
My relationship with Paris began when I was working for Cerruti in the mid-1960s. When there was an important event in his store, Nino Cerruti very kindly took me with him. I was fascinated, and the city made a big impression on me.
I thought maybe I should write or study law. I even had the idea to open a flower shop. But I was so fascinated with film, I couldn't stay away.
You quickly find, when you are a hand-reader as I am, that nothing interests people so much as themselves.
I think I'm always going to be a paranormal girl at heart. I'm always going to be intrigued by it.
Everyone asks me, 'Why do you choose such subversive or shocking themes?' but when I'm alone in my office, I'm not like, 'OK I'm going to shock.' I want to write about a character who fascinates me, someone who I don't understand.
I think that each character has fascinated and interested me enough to want to play him.
I have this personal affinity for the desert. I am fascinated by the desert. I love it.
So what did influence 'Bird Box?' Well, I've had a crush on Medusa since about 1985. Maybe the book is an ode to her.
I don't know why I've always been so captivated by architecture.
I've always felt that the poems I've written which have historical context are hopefully not just simply plucking something out of history and saying great, let's write about that. In every case what has happened is that I've become fascinated or haunted by something and couldn't shake it.
Well, language seems to be something that obsesses me. I'm always writing about it.
'Pompeii' is kind of a lifelong obsession for me.
I always wanted to play a mental patient. I was fascinated with playing crazy people in college, and I don't know if I ever quite perfected it.
I was in college for organizational communication and politics because I was just fascinated by influence. I wondered how people have influence, not because I wanted to inspire the world - yet.
When I was 8 years old, there was a showcase of all the instruments you can learn at my school. This guy was playing the trumpet. I heard it and was like 'Oof I got to learn to play.' The sound - everything was amazing. I was blown away.
I've been a little bit obsessed with religion, without being a religious person, for about a decade.
I get obsessed by little nerdy things in my corner that no one else is interested in.
I'm drawn to a story partly based on the fact that it's something I might not be as familiar with.
I do not know why I have always been fascinated by science or why I have been driven by the intense desire to make some original contribution. And although I have had some degree of success as a scientist, it is hard to say precisely why.
When I first started dating my husband, I had this weird fascination with the circus and clowns and old carnival things and sideshow freaks and all that. About a month after we started dating, he bought me this amazing black-and-white photo book on the circus in the 1930s, and I started sobbing.
