A beautiful woman, Simone Weil said, seeing herself in the mirror, knows "This is I." An ugly woman knows with equal certainty, "This is not I." Maud knew this neat division represented an over-simplification. The doll-mask she saw had nothing to do with her, nothing.

A surprising number of people - including many students of literature - will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since they were children.

I think there are a lot more important things than art in the world. But not to me.

…my Solitude is my Treasure, the best thing I have.

I hated being a novelist when I was 20 - I had nothing to write about.

I think vestigially there's a synesthete in me but not like a real one who immediately knows what colour Wednesday is.

She devoured stories with rapacious greed, ranks of black marks on white, sorting themselves into mountains and trees, stars, moons and suns, dragons, dwarfs, and forests containing wolves, foxes and the dark.