An interesting thing about New Zealand, you know, literature is that it really didn't begin in any real sense until the 20th century.
— Eleanor Catton
One of the things I really like about Victorian novels is the close anatomisation of character. People's gestures and mannerisms and the quality of their thought is very closely identified and analysed.
The zodiac is a system a person can play with and see meaning in.
From the very beginning, I had an ambition for 'The Luminaries': a direction - but not a real idea.
As an artist, you need to be not at all entitled in your relation with the work. So money is kind of worrying. You can start to expect things if you're used to a certain level of comfort.
I feel very strongly influenced by long-form box-set TV drama... I feel really excited that, at last, the novel has found its on-screen equivalent, because the emotional arcs and changes that you can follow are just so much more like a novel, and so many amazing shows recently have done as much as film can do to show the interior world.
The ability of humans to read meaning into patterns is the most defining characteristic we have.
The readership of Victorian novels, when they were published, was much less diverse. People were probably white, and had enough money to be literate. Very often, there are phrases in Italian, German and French that are left untranslated.
Any description of a person that comes from the outside is very hard to deal with. People don't like being summarised. It's nice to receive a compliment, but it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable.
I often feel intellectually frustrated when I'm in a position where I'm not moving forward; when I'm not enquiring about something.
It is less fun to talk about what I am feeling rather than what I am thinking. Saying 'I feel awesome' isn't really interesting or enquiring.
I have always loved reading books for children and young adults, particularly when those books are mysteries.
The way that I see astrology is as a repository of thought and psychology. A system we've created as a culture as way to make things mean things.
I think that's what fiction writing is actually all about. It's about trying to solve problems in creative ways.
I don't see that my age has anything to do with what is between the covers of my book, any more than the fact that I am right-handed. It's a fact of my biography, but it's uninteresting.
Astrology's a moving system that depends on where you're looking at it from on Earth. My horoscope here in London would be completely different to down in New Zealand.
The nice thing about the zodiac as a system is it is quite comprehensive as a range of impulses and psychological states it can speak about.
I highlight everything I find interesting, and then type out everything I've highlighted, and then print out everything I've typed, and reread these printed notes as often as possible.
Money doesn't transform a person - the only thing that can is love.
I really wanted to write an adventure story, a murder-mystery that was set during the gold-rush years in New Zealand.
There was a computer in our garage when I was growing up, and I'd go out there in winter and wrap myself in a blanket and write a story.
In my experience, and that of a lot of other women writers, all of the questions coming at them from interviewers tend to be about how lucky they are to be where they are - about luck and identity and how the idea struck them.
