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Violence is very much with us, and we like to see it. I doubt if you can change that, and I'm not sure you should want to. I have occasionally been very upset by something I was writing, but it's quite rare: I keep my writing very separate from my life.

I was motivated to write about violence because I believe it's not unusual. I see it as just a part of life, and I think we get in trouble when we separate people who've experienced it from those who haven't.

Violence is a part of the world and life, and you shouldn't have to take it out of stories.

There is still a funny notion that women should not write violent fiction.

I never set out to write literature; I set out to tell stories. And some of my work may be very raunchy and very bloodthirsty - but life, for me, is a violent thing.

I think women tend to write about how violence feels, whereas men tend to write about what violence looks like.

The world is not violent. But there is a lot of violence in it.

Violence commands both literature and life, and violence is always crude and distorted.

So much of contemporary crime fiction is painful to read and obsessed with violence, particularly against women, and I can't read that.

I'm very critical of crime novels that use gratuitous violence to shock readers when it isn't necessary. If that's all you have to offer as a writer, perhaps you're in the wrong job.