As a little girl, I didn't like stories about little girls. I liked stories about dragons and beasts and princes and princesses and fear and terror and the Four Musketeers and almost anything other than nice little girls making moral decisions about whether to tell the teacher about what the other little girl did or did not do.

I don't only write about English literature; I also write about chaos theory and... ants. I can understand ants.

Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.

I'd like to write the way Matisse paints.

Human beings love stories because they safely show us beginnings, middles and ends.

Our days weave together the simple pleasures of daily life, which we should never take for granted, and the higher pleasures of Art and Thought which we may now taste as we please, with none to forbid or criticise.

I am not an academic who happens to have written a novel. I am a novelist who happens to be quite good academically.