19 Quotes by Christine Leunens

It's not ideal when art is seen as just some passing entertainment quickly thrown out into the market, like a consumer object. You have to let things settle and think about them.

Be true to yourself, pick something that really matters to them and is dear to them.

As a writer, I'm mostly at my desk, staring out my window. No one sees me.

The themes that I explore, Taika Waititi also explores: how teaching children a sense of 'us and them' breeds a sense of superiority and dehumanises what one perceives as 'otherness'; and why this theme is relevant to today's rise in the far-Right, how children and youth are indoctrinated into extremism and terrorism.

I think what happens is when you have fear, fear translates into hatred.

Then it's very easy to point fingers at other people and use this kind of rhetoric, infestation and comparing people to rodents, insects, showing them as very undesirable people - not people who feel the same, who care about their families too, no, but as people who are different and less human, to dehumanize them.

However, for my characters to have depth, they have to be human and complex, have both qualities and flaws, do the right things at times, and at others, things they'll regret having done and not necessarily know how to undo.

Write something and leave it aside so you've practically forgotten it as much as possible, a month or so, then come back and read it as if you're reading it for the first time.

I don't feel pride when I look at a magazine spread I did for Vogue, but writing is really satisfying to me. I can go so deep into people's interior lives, slowly and with complexity, over years and years sometimes. That's very rewarding, in a way that modelling never was.