I think all novels are contemporary. When people went to see 'Antony-Cleopatra' at the Globe in the 16th century, they were not going to get a history lesson on the Roman Empire. It was about love, sex, and also about dynastic troubles.
Love is very funny business. And sex - well, let's face it, sex is hysterical.
Sex is like washing your face - just something you do because you have to. Sex without love is absolutely ridiculous. Sex follows love, it never precedes it.
Strip away the morphing landscapes and rips in the space-time continuum, and my stories are about things that novels have always been about: love and sex and identity and memory and history and redemption.
I remember I was unsure about doing 'Shameless.' I'd never acted in anything so commercial. I read the script in the garden with my mum, Mary. She said it's filthy dirty, but she said these people have love and sex and nothing else. That made me take the role.
Women are more likely to have sex and fall in love, which can be tough because that's not the way men work.
Sex, on the whole, was meant to be short, nasty and brutish. If what you want is cuddling, you should buy a puppy.
So much for the fruits of love. Love? What's love? Sex, ah, that's another thing. Love has babies: sex has abortions.
Love is mistranslated into sex, because sex is not an expression of love. Sex is an expression of physical activity. It can be an expression of love between two people in love, but it's a carnal expression.
